


maybe together we can get somewhere

by christinaapplegay



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Strangers to Friends, drug mention, it's a road trip au, set in 1997, smoking weed and cigarettes about as much as on the show, to lovers...eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:00:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25950244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christinaapplegay/pseuds/christinaapplegay
Summary: "She finds that Judy's presence grounds her, stops her in her tracks with a grasp of a hand that says I see you, and I think you see me, too, and in a strange stroke of surprise, she wants to learn more about Judy Hale from California who wears her sweaters backwards and inside out."or, an au where jen's nearing deadbeat territory, judy's a bit of a drifter, and maybe divine intervention is a thing, after all.
Relationships: Judy Hale/Jen Harding
Comments: 59
Kudos: 86





	1. well, i don't mind, if i don't think about it

**Author's Note:**

> yes, i am fully diving into a young jen/judy au with a ridiculous premise, but i know exactly where it is going, no need to fret
> 
> title is from 'fast car' by tracy chapman and chapter title is from 'a worrying thing' by yo la tengo 
> 
> thank you to @loamvessel for reading this over for me a bunch of times <3 (if you are not already reading "a lot's gonna change" exit out of this and read that, it's insane how good it is)
> 
> also shameless twitter plug @lindsayweirds

Answering the personal ad of a 20-year-old woman who describes herself as “an intuitive Pisces sun with enough Joni Mitchell mixtapes to fill a forty-hour car ride” is not how Jen thought her Saturday would go.

She’s heard of personal ads, of course, those snippets in the paper deemed The Lonely Hearts Club, the flyers plastered to the community bulletin boards in cafe’s littered across the city, always some variation of here’s my income, here’s my degree, and somehow, I Love The New York Knicks, without fail, like that’s a personality trait Jen’s just aching to press her face up close with.

They’re just not on her radar.

 _Men_ just aren’t on her radar.

She has plenty of other important subjects to obsess over, like flunking out of her third year of college, facing a destruction of a motor vehicle charge, and the possibility that she might be allergic to gluten. Dating is… well, there's a bottom shelf and then there’s like, the seabed. Jen’s at the seabed.

This specific personal ad, though, this Pisces sun bitch who claims herself as an intuitive but offers a free ride from New York City to Los Angeles to anyone willing, strikes her, maybe because there’s a hint of desperation there in her words, _leaving asap, please contact_ , that Jen grasps and rebrands as her own.

There tend to be job listings on this cork board, though babysitting positions are the only one’s today, and it’s like, yeah, that’ll work, but, she’s 22–she needs a more respectable job than looking after 5-year-olds who have temper tantrums on the floor of their Manhattan Brownstone in between their piano lessons and kindergarten auditions.

So, in the tucked-away corner of her favorite neighborhood cafe, she takes a flyer headlined _Cross Country California_ , subheaded _Interested?_ and folds it into her back pocket like she’s ripped a page from the bible, and she exits with two everything bagels, two lattes, and the personal ad of a probable stoner hippie chick who doesn’t shower.

As she trails home, she knows her genuine consideration of this anonymous proposition is ridiculous. This could be a cover-up for pre-mediated murder. If she answers, she could be New York’s next homicide victim. The first of its occasion, she can read the headlines now:

 _Dumb blonde answers personal ad, gets in car with total stranger, subsequently axed by her own stupidity at the tender age of 22; accomplishments include well, nothing, but she has the pivotal tap dance from_ You Were Never Lovelier _memorized, so, there’s that, at least._

As she miscalculates and steps in slushy snow that wets her Converse up ‘till her mid-calf, she thinks, who cares, really, if murder in the first degree is the case.

Maybe it’s because Jen’s aching to prove that she’s not afraid of life and it’s stupid little twists, that she very much is a go-getter. That despite her mother’s breast cancer death, she’s entirely capable of blossoming into her own person, untethered to the loss. That though it’s as if she’s treading in the middle of the Atlantic, muscles nearly giving out, she can seize an opportunity when it knocks. She can meet up with a stranger, spend forty-something hours in a car with them, narrowly escape a possible psychopath, and start a new life in California.

No one in Brooklyn will ever even miss her.

*

Jen calls the number at half-past seven.

The paper burns a hole in her pocket all day. Her dad ropes her into a long-winded conversation over bagels and coffee, falling into a tirade pertaining to how she’s degreeless, jobless, boyfriendless, easing out of it with: what do you want for dinner? She says mostaccioli. He says they should go for Chinese takeout, and Jen tries not to feel sad that he doesn’t attempt the pasta dish. She tells herself that it’s better that he refrains from trying so she can better remember her mom's version. Jen decides to barricade herself in her room and spin _Sweet Charity_ on the record player. It's infinitely better than sitting on the living room couch with a father who can’t stand her.

It’s irrational, but if there’s one thing she has learned from her mother having had cancer for half of her life, it’s that shit doesn’t have to make sense for it to happen.

They only have one landline, so Jen makes up an excuse of going to the corner store for a beer knowing it will be cigarettes she buys, and she finds the nearest payphone, three blocks south. It’s fucking freezing tonight, but it’s her only option. She’s not going to wait until her dad goes to bed to call this girl (worrying thoughts that she’s already accepted someone’s offer fueling her) and she’s not going to cram herself in a closet, pulling the cord of the phone with her, either.

When she reaches the phone booth, she peaks her face out from her wrap-around scarf, slips her mittens off, and goes to unfold the flyer stuffed in her pocket. She reads over the most pertinent information: 20-years-old, female, slight peanut allergy. She nervously digs the sole of her boot into fresh snow, leaving angels the shape of the sole of her docs. She grabs her coin purse out of her coat pocket, a little white crocheted one with pink roses her mom made years ago, and rummages for at least two dollars before dialing the given number. The tone gives her chills of the full-body variety.

A gust of wind picks up and shoves her forward and into the plastic barrier as she hears, “Hello?” like the chill knows Jen’s forging something she needs a push to actually do.

She grips the phone, notices there’s a sticky residue on the plastic, and tries not to gag. “Hello.”

“Hi, there. Do I know you?”

“No.” Jen glances behind her, hating how many people are walking by, like not only is she bearing herself to a stranger, but to the whole of Greenpoint. "I saw your flyer. At, uh, Mooney's."

“Oh!”

“Yup.”

“Was it the mention of Joni Mitchell that reeled you in?”

“No, I cannot say that it was.”

“Wait, really? I thought that would do it.”

“I don’t...really listen to Joni. But, I’m 22. And a girl. If that makes any difference.”

“Ooh, an older woman.”

“What?”

“So, you’re up for it, then?”

Like it’s that easy, chickadee. “Well, fuck, hold on. What’s your name?”

“Judy.”

“Alright. Judy.”

“Judy Hale.”

“Okay. Judy Hale.”

A beat that makes Jen nervous, turning the tips of her ears hot like she’s surveyed under a lab lamp. She doesn’t know what to say. Judy Hale, the Pisces sun. Jen thinks this Judy girl should take over, share who she is, really sell the offer, so she waits.

“Do you think you could tell me your name? Only if you’d like.”

Duh. “Jen.”

“Hi, Jen. What are you wearing?”

“Wha-what am I…” Oh God, has she been fucking tricked into some like, phone sex thing? “No. Fuck you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Kidding! Bad joke.”

Jen scoffs. She puts another dollar in the machine.

“Is the position still open or not?”

“You make it sound like a job, Jen,” and she thinks Judy’s just trying to be funny, though in such an unfunny way, “But, yes. So far, only one older gentleman has contacted me.”

Jen laughs, low and dry.

“So, Jen,” Judy starts with what Jen detects as a cautious edge, “why do you wanna go to California?”

Of course, Jen hasn’t thought about it passed, well, the sudden dream of a new life, the expanse of America away. She doesn’t have any stock in California. She’s never left the state of New York, much less any of the five boroughs. It’s not California, it’s being anywhere but here.

“Just, uh,” Jen says, huffing at herself, “you know. I love the sun. What about you?”

“Oh, I’m from there.”

A fucking Californian. Rare breed around here, Jen thinks.

“So, what are you doing in what, Brooklyn? Flushing?”

“I’m kind of a drifter. I have some extended family in Queens, and I’ve been here for a little over a month now and well, this is where the personals come in, I figure if I’m gonna drive from here back to L.A., I should have a buddy.”

Well, so far, murder is not on the docket. This girl sounds harmless, kind of like an overly friendly toddler without the stranger danger zap to the brain. She doesn’t know what she’s gonna tell her dad. She thinks it’s very possible she could disappear off the face of the earth and he would be relieved, free of the burden she’s turned into, rather than miss his 22-year-old soon to be jailbird. And really, what does she have going for her, tethering her to this miserable life, anyway?

“I guess I’m your buddy.”

*

Agreeing to meet at the very cafe Jen pulls the flyer from feels like inviting a stranger into her space and allowing them to rummage around until they find something they can dig the knife in on her for. She considers this cafe her sanctuary, where she’s come since childhood, where her mom would take her for Saturday morning chocolate croissants, and purposely meeting a stranger here feels wholly some sort of sick sacrilege.

She arrives early to scope out the place, scope out _her_ , because this Judy girl could have the same exact idea, and murder still may be possible, who can ever be sure, so she wants to beat Judy to the punch. They agree on 10 so Jen’s there at 9:30, unwrapping her thick knit scarf and ordering a plain cup of coffee.

Jen tries not to stew about how weird this is, sitting at a table in a cafe waiting to meet a girl she’s going to travel forty some odd hours with, but all she can think about is what her mom would say. Jen thinks she’s only adding onto the list of surefire disappointments. This will be the fifth one this year. And it’s only February.

Judy arrives early, too, 9:45, and like some fated twist, Jen knows it’s her when she walks in. The cafe is empty save for an elderly man off in the corner, but, still, Jen feels a surge through her chest as the girl walks towards her like somehow, they each know it’s the other.

“You’re Jen?”

“You’re Judy.”

“That’s what it says on the tin.” It takes Judy an eternal second to settle, and Jen watches as she unzips her coat because this is what she’s here to do, observe the weirdo woman she’s gonna be road-tripping with. As Judy sits opposite her, Jen notices that Judy’s chunky knit sweater is on backwards and inside out, and she thinks about telling her but decides it’s kinda funny that she doesn’t realize because it’s like, blatantly obvious (like, the tag has gotta be in her line of sight, right?) and keeps her mouth shut. Judy has at least one sterling silver ring on every finger, two on her right middle and left index. Her bangs are in a fringe that pokes her eyes, a chunk cut out of the right side. Judy seems to notice she’s staring and says, “Accident.”

“Looks like it.”

“So, Jen,” Judy sighs, clasping her hands on the table like a teacher about to address the class, and Jen gives her a look like, well, alright, and says, “tell me a little bit about yourself.”

“Well, I’m not a murderer. Are you?” Jen wants to ask if they can each do a background check, decides against it when she remembers she’s not free of sin.

“I am not,” Judy says, then, perks up, “though,” she tilts her head from side to side, clicks her tongue, “I killed a bird once. And like, on total accident. It was a pet bird. I was eight. I gave him a pitted cherry, which was my mistake, because I wanted to share and bam, dead. I live with it every day, I don’t think I could kill a person.”

“Oh,” she says, nodding at Judy, “you are weird. I knew you would be.”

“Well, thank you,” Judy says, and Jen thinks she genuinely takes it as a compliment.

Judy smiles, her eyes are big and brown like the swirls in the wood they sit at. She’s glowing like a kid at Disneyland, about to be handed cotton candy, and her eyes light further up as she says, “I love this song,” pointing up to the ceiling, and in all her joy she nearly knocks the cup of coffee Jen’s not taken one sip of over. She hums, _let's go far away, let's leave today_ , and says, “ha, how very fitting.”

Jen nods, going for purposeful condescension, and Judy says, with staunch conviction, “It’s Yo La Tengo.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Jen says, pulling the cup to her edge of the table.

Judy looks scandalized, but Jen bets that Judy doesn’t know the likes of La La La Human Steps, Québécois contemporary dance group. 

“First, it’s not caring for Joni Mitchell, and now Yo La Tengo? If you don’t like Alanis, I don’t think this arrangement is gonna work.”

“I like Alanis,” Jen bites, “Who the fuck doesn’t like Alanis? Frankly, I’m offended.”

Judy grins, toothy and wide, and Jen had hoped her comeback would give her some edge, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening.

“Well, finally you’re making some sense. You are definitely gonna get a music education, though, madam.”

Jen feels herself blush, her neck hot and prickly, and that frustrates her. Who is this girl to make her blush like this? She looks down into her mug, the crema sinking into the coffee, a speckled night sky as foreign as the girl in front of her.

When she looks up, Judy is bobbing her head to the beat of the song and glancing around. She looks calm, despite the presence of a stranger, and Jen envies her momentarily. The set of her lips slant downwards, flatten as she softly smiles, and a few distinct lines form around her mouth. Jen decides that Judy is a very beautiful young woman. Then, she scrunches her nose at how she sounds like an elderly lady sitting on a neighborhood stoop.

Judy’s necklace, the shape of a waning crescent moon, reflects the sliver of light let in from the snowy February morning. She says, “Are you a Scorpio? You seem quite distrusting, but also very passionate,” and Jen thinks, this is going to be a very, very bad idea.


	2. what made it special made it dangerous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beta credit to @loamvessel and the chapter title from 'cloudbusting' by kate bush <3

On Monday, she drains her bank account. 

She boards the Queens-bound G train, expertly switches at Court Street stop to the Manhattan-bound 7, and gets off at Grand Central Terminal, at 42nd Street, the Chrysler building growing into the sky like a vine, Joni Mitchell's husky, bell-like voice a new acquaintance. She taps her index finger on the Walkman in her coat pocket, and as Joni drags out _oh, it gets so lonely, when you're walking, and the streets are full of strangers_ in her ears, she scrunches her nose in protest. Walking around downtown in a sea of unknowns is her pastime, puts her into perspective; it allows her a pardon, a chance to remind herself, who am I in all of this, anyway? 

At the bank, she's met with questioning from the teller despite wearing her best business casual outfit: pinstripe fitted slacks with a cherry silk blouse. She wears light eyeliner, her hair straight for an air of professionalism. Maybe it's the Docs, maybe it’s the previous account owner being dead, or maybe she just looks young, the roundness of her nose occasionally pigeonholing her as fresh outta high school. Paired with the high vaulted ceilings and the bitchy brown lipstick the teller wears, Jen thinks she might be an ant, squished. 

Two-thousand. Two-thousand fifty and thirty-two cents. The money is given to her in rubber bands the color of watermelon pop rocks and she stuffs it in her faux leather mini backpack, hightailing it home. Joni says something about how she's _fumbling dumb, deaf, and blind_ as Jen bites her fingernails on the subway and wonders what’s for dinner. The train comes to a screeching halt at Queen’s Plaza subway stop and she thinks she’ll miss the high pitched, piercing sound, the embarrassed swaying into the person next to her, how her hand's sweat as she holds onto the bar, sticky and clammy. She thinks of the promise Judy Hale provides, and she cracks a smile. 

An empty vintage train happens to pass by on the opposite side of the tracks. Jen stares through the window and into the train, given blurry glimpses of green paint and brown upholstery, the chance to daydream about living in 1940s New York, taking the subway downtown and dancing on stage as a Rockette. They’re usually only running during the holidays, and Jen feels a sinking ache deep in her stomach when it dawns on her that Christmas was her last in the city. She turns from the window and focuses on the fly that buzzes in her proximity. The sting in her eyes is blinked away. 

*

If Jen’s going to miss anything about the walk-up she’s grown up in, it’s her bedroom window that opens to a fire escape, looking over McGuinness Boulevard; the dingy hole in the wall bar with painted fairy lights as signage, the bookstore with the black tabby cat who lives in the display window and visits her sometimes, always after a particularly rough day, like Sleepy the cat’s intuition leads her there, to Jen, something like an angel of healing. Jen's life is lived in this room, lived in this view, the rooftops across the way whole galaxies she’s been given glimpses of, and suddenly it’s as if 22 years have not been experienced, savored, but passed through as if life on Eckford Street is set in stone, the lifespan only a fleeting moment. 

One of her favorite nighttime rituals is sitting on the sill, smoking a cigarette, and letting old records spin. In the thick of winter, she bundles, though receives the chill, welcoming the sting on her cheeks that spreads across her face like fire, turning them red, prickly, the burn like when you stick your bare hands in fresh snow, the shock grounding. She plays “Come Softly to Me” by The Fleetwoods because it reminds her of being a kid, clueless and when life just was, her existence not marked down by failures, but held by promise; when she had a mom who she clung to like something chasmic within her knew.

As a scratchy, _I speak softly, darling, hear what I say,_ croons around her, enveloping her like a warm hug so familiar if she closes her eyes she can almost feel it, it’s ripped away when she hears a booming, “Jen, cut the smoking,” from behind her bedroom door. 

She takes a long drag, tipping her head to the sky she exhales slowly as if offering the smoke in prayer, and she closes her eyes as tiny flecks of snow hit her cheeks. She watches a white van stop in front of the bagel shop diagonally across, and begin pumping flour into the air, the synchronicity not lost on her. 

“Jen, come on,” he yells. 

She huffs, stubbing the cigarette against the outer wall, and sets it in the blue ceramic ashtray balancing on the landing. 

“What?” she yells back, climbing into her room. 

“Cut the smoking, kid. Come on."

She opens her door, glaring expectantly, ready for burgeoning dissension.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says. His greying buzzcut, droopy, sleepy eyes, and Hawaiian shirt-wearing-all-year-round-ness make it difficult to talk down to him, but it’s easier to say, “I’m fucking 22 if I want to smoke, I can,” than say I’m sorry for being such a bitch. 

“Are you trying to prove a point?”

“What?”

“A point,” he says, “with the smoking?”

“No,” she says, thinking, just say sorry, just fucking say sorry and let it die in front of you.

“Do you do drugs?” Third time this week he’s asked. 

“No,” Jen hangs her head back, “God, what, do you want me to do a fucking pee test?”

“Hey,” he says with a condescending shrug, “you practically smoke a pack a day, and you won’t talk to me. You could be doing crystal meth and I wouldn’t know.” 

“Okay, yeah, I’m not doing crystal meth. Or black tar heroin, so you need not worry.”

He gives her a look and then says, “Your mom would hate that you smoke,” as he gazes past her, the guilt trip lost on him. “You’re gonna catch a cold with that window open all the damn time. It’s February.” 

“My immune system is great, actually.”

“Well, when you get lung cancer we’ll see about that.” 

"Oh, what the fuck ever." She shuts the door in his face, stalks across her room, climbs out the window, and down the fire escape. The chill is harsh, the metal of the latter burns, icy and rough. Jen likes the idea that her dad will be hurt by her unexpected leave, and it’s enough. 

Blocking out the interaction with her dad, because she doesn’t mind if she doesn’t think about it, she walks onto the main drag, regretting not grabbing her Walkman before hastily jumping out the window. Judy Hale did not lie when she said she has 40 hours worth of Joni Mitchell mixtapes—Jen’s only on the first of two given to her with a wink attached, and so far, it feels neverending. 

A part of her can’t ignore it, though, can’t ignore their pointless fighting, a part of her wants to figure why it’s as if they can’t be in the same proximity without seeing who can say gotcha first. She doesn’t know how to fix it, and she’s beginning to grow under the impression that repairing their relationship is not going to happen, that there is a word they both are missing, the result of her mother’s death, the loss of her father’s wife, and until it’s found cannot be taken in and used, so she might as well accept this fucked up father-daughter dynamic while it’s here.

She’s passing the very last self-service gas station in the area, a payphone and a mini-mart attached; she hits her coat pockets and is relieved to feel her coin purse. She thinks about buying a 6-pack of Budweiser, thinks maybe if she brings beer home to her dad it will be some sort of truce. _Here, now get off my back._ She thinks of Judy Hale, and she wonders if her dad is easily won over by alcohol. 

Judy says they are leaving the first of March, two weeks from tomorrow, and that she's welcome to call her anytime between then. She says she’s “up all night,” and Jen wouldn’t put it past her being nocturnal. Jen can’t remember what time it is, but she wonders if Judy’s up now. 

Under the harsh fluorescent glow of gas station lights, she riffles through her pockets, praying she has the flyer crumpled among broken cigarettes. “Okay,” she sighs when she finds it, and maybe it’s the putrid smell of petrol rotting her brain, but she stalks over to the phonebooth adjacent to the store, sifts the coins through, and dials. Somehow, this time around, it’s even more nerve-wracking, the tone stabbing. 

“Hello?”

“Hi.” 

“Hi?”

Jen waits, stone-faced. “It’s Jen.”

“Oh!” Judy cheerily elongates the ‘o’ and Jen almost hangs up. 

“Yeah.” 

“Well,” Judy says, disgustingly like she’s a saleswoman at Bloomingdale’s, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Jen regrets calling. She doesn’t know why she did in the first place. So, she says the first thing that comes to mind. “I would like to know the route we are taking."

“Oh, true. We did not talk about that.”

“Yeah. I forgot to ask, what, with all the riveting talk of moonstones.” 

“They’re shiny, okay? I get carried away. Did I tell you another name for them is Hec-”

“The route, Judy,” Jen says, and she practically feels Judy’s wince, and imagines her blush, redeeming herself from when Judy made her do that very thing. 

“Well, I was thinking... we could go up to Canada, and from there, we go through the states.” 

“Canada? The hell is in Canada?"

“Hey, what do you have against Canadians?”

“Nothing. I just personally think Canada is like, Diet America.”

“Untrue, Jen,” Judy says this with such conviction yet still so sweetly it unnerves her. “Vancouver is probably the most gorgeous place I’ve ever seen.” 

“Well,” Jen says, taking a turn at elongating her words, she adds a sarcastic, “take me to Vancouver, then.”

“Ideally, I’m thinking of Montreal.” 

“The French section? Judy, I don’t know French.”

“Oh, tu ne parles pas Français?” Judy laughs, and Jen finds herself just barely smiling as she hears Judy giggling at her own attempt at a French accent; she clenches her jaw.

“But, that’s directly north,” Judy continues, “and I feel like that would be unwise. If it’s this cold here, I can’t imagine it there. I’ve heard Québec is basically Antarctica.” 

“Okay, so not French land, I guess.” 

She hears Judy sigh, click her tongue, and Jen momentarily pictures her mouth and then squeezes her eyes shut—the cold making her eyes water. 

“Toronto?” Judy says. 

“The place with the Space Needle?” 

“That’s Seattle.” 

“So, what’s that thing in Toronto?” 

“Space Needle 2.0?” 

Jen thinks for a moment. “How long is the drive?"

“Like, 8 hours, maybe?” 

Judy continues rambling on about various pit stops she has in mind, the possibility of Niagara Falls, Chicago for a deep-dish pizza, the beauty of the gleaming sun weeks away from Spring in Utah. 

Jen focuses on a bug, crawling in the cracks of the sidewalk, lit only by the orange glow of a BP GAS sign, Judy’s voice the score to the late February evening. 

Judy then says, “There’s also this place in Nebraska that has a time capsule in the shape of a pyramid. That could be a cool place to stop, too, right?”

“Nebraska?” God, that’s worse than Canada. Jen really hasn’t thought too deeply about this at all. She’s gonna be smack dab in the middle of corn country and probably other places like Ohio that don’t even sound real. “I don’t know, Judy. I don’t trust open land like that. Like, it doesn’t sound normal, you know?”

“Okay, I know Nebraska is like, nothing to you as a New Yorker, but it's a beautiful state, and I, for one, like time capsules."

“I mean, I guess I can’t stop you. I'm just along for the ride.”

“Hey, no, I won’t make you do anything you don’t wanna do, Jen.” It might be the most serious thing Jen’s ever heard, Judy's voice a steel beam, setting the foundation. Jen laughs low, turned nervous. It’s embarrassing how much the sentiment means to her, compares it to when you’re a kid and your teacher shows you a book and says, I thought you might like this, and you feel seen for the first time that it really counts; the giver a reflection of your desire. The last decade of her life has been compromised by everyone telling her to do, do do, and here this stranger is, requesting the exact opposite. Jen doesn't know what to make of it. 

*

Jen wakes with a pulsating headache as if the base of a car radio is inside of her head. It’s colder than usual, colder as if the crisp morning air swirls around her room, burrowing under blankets with her. The room is dim with slivers of white light, the alarm clock illuminating ten of seven in green, she cocoons herself and turns over only to see a little black cat curled so tightly she looks like a pillbug. She stares for a moment, wondering how she didn’t notice. There’s visible dampness to the sheet where the cat lies, and Jen prays it’s from the snow. Her voice not yet awake, she reaches for the cat pulling her close, receiving a small mew, and is lulled back to sleep by the croon of her purr. 

It might be hours, it might be mere minutes, but she’s woken by a knock on her door, a "Jen, you cannot sleep this late," and the unmaintained nails of a pink paw on her bare thigh. In her just awoken blur she doesn’t realize her dad has entered the room until it’s, “Jennifer,” roughly spoken, and he’s hovering above her like a skyscraper, offering no sense of absolution. 

“You know who sleeps ‘til noon?” 

She goes to reply, lethargy getting the better of her, she’s beaten to it as he says, “Deadbeats.”

The headache is still there, the jackhammering soundtrack of the street syncing with the beat of her temples, and a little black cat scurries out from under the covers, and makes a home on her chest.

“You let that thing sleep in your bed?” he says, and he moves to shut the window. Ah, Jen thinks. 

Jen, somehow, is cognizant enough to know she shouldn’t say, “Like you haven’t invited worse things into your bed,” and only scratches the tip-top of the cat’s head, fur bristly between her ears.

“She’s probably got rabies," he says, and Jen looks over at him as he stands in front of the window. 

“Well, maybe if I’m lucky, she’ll bite the shit out of me.” 

“Alright, alright,” he says, not looking at her, “I just wanted to see if you wanted to have lunch. I’ve got a longer break today. We could go sit and have a meal.” 

“Oh… well, that’s nice, dad,” Jen says, “but I already have lunch plans, actually.”

“With who?” 

She rubs her eyes, digging her knuckles in, frustrated that she’s still sleepy though slept and slept and slept. “You don’t know ‘em.”

“Is it a date?” It’s far too hopeful, and sometimes it feels like he thinks getting with a man is the key to fixing her...which, ha, Jen does not believe marrying at 22 is the prophylactic he thinks it is. 

Jen flops her arms onto the duvet. “No, dad, sorry, but this is not a date with my future spouse.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and Jen focuses on the cat’s soft blinks. He says, “I think we might have a can or two of cat food in the pantry,” and leaves as Jen lays there, the cat’s purr matching the beat of her heart, until she has to get up, or it will look like she’s flaking on Judy. 

(As she figures what to wear, sticking with black denim, black cable knit, black docs, black overcoat–she likes the cohesiveness, alright?–she thinks back to Judy mentioning last night that it’s entirely possible to make it across the country with only a couple hundred. It doesn’t sound right at all, and Jen worries that they have wildly different views on this trip.) 

Right before Jen hung the phone up, Judy had suggested they have lunch tomorrow, and Jen initially says she can’t. But, then, Judy says she’s never been to a deli, at least not a New York one, and really, it’s more of a service to the institution of Jewish delis than anything, taking Judy to Abigail’s, her neighborhood spot. 

She meets Judy there, at the corner of Lorimer and Bayard, the deli with the green awning, she’s always called it, and when she comes up on the place she wants to laugh at the sight of Judy bouncing on the balls of her feet, enveloped by a long, scarlet-colored coat. Jen receives an eager 15-feet-away-wave, and when she stands in front of Judy she notices her earrings–obviously handmade. 

Judy says, “Hey, wow. You look like a black cloud.” 

Jen looks her up and down–rainbow clay earrings, floral felted jeans, pastel pink boots. “Yeah, and you look like a children’s party host.” 

It’s a hole in the wall, tight squeeze kind of joint, regulars seated at the counter. If Jen were friendlier, she would say hi, hello, and on the rare day when she’s feeling open, she might converse, but today, crammed in line with dozens of people in their puffy winter coats, the room a sauna of body heat, getting two pastrami sandwiches to go is golden.

As they wait in line to order, she turns to Judy, who has her coat unbuttoned, is pulling the neck of her sweater, fanning herself, and she laughs. “You’re sweating like a whore in church, Judy.”

“It’s a hot church,” she says, and Jen eyes the shine of sweat on the base on her neck. 

(Maybe it’s a good thing, visiting a place dear to her.) 

“Is there anything like, sans meat?” 

“No. That’s the whole point.” 

Judy nods, and as they step forward in line, Jen says, “Why?”

“I… am an herbivore.” 

“Oh, fuck’s sake, Judy.”

Judy gestures to the menu, “they have fries, at least.”

She should have known Judy's a vegetarian. She’s got that earthy, love everything, the worms in the dirt, the snails on the sidewalk, vibe. With what little Jen knows about astrology, she would’ve thought Judy to be a Taurus. Judy won’t look at her, so she digs her finger into her shoulder, hard, and when Judy does glance her way, Jen says, “We can go somewhere else.” 

Judy smiles, the delicate curves around her mouth appearing, and Jen wonders why she notices them so distinctly. “That’s okay. I’ll get the latkes.”

“You sure?” Jen says, “because we’re next in line.” 

“Yeah,” Judy says, “I’ve never had ‘em, I’d like to try.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, Jen sees a barstool open up, and instinct kicks in, “Judy, see that?” she flails her arm in the direction, “Go grab it, fast.” 

Judy nods, says a quick, "oh, okay!" and Jen watches as she treads through a small sea of people, like a goldfish in a swamp. Jen orders and makes her way over to Judy, situated between two burly Brooklyn men. She hovers over her, neglecting Judy’s offer to switch, though she immediately dislikes the weird intimacy of Judy sitting, facing her, Jen standing nearly between her legs. 

And Judy, well, she gets right to it. “So, do you live with your family?” 

She clears her throat. She could lie, but there is something about Judy that doesn’t allow for it. It’s like looking into the well of truth and spitting. “I live with my dad.” 

“Oh, are your parents divorced?”

“No,” Jen says, “They will bring us the food, by the way. Are your parents?”

“Nope.” Judy’s eyes are light like those of fallen leaves, her cheeks a deep blush from warmth. She disrobes her coat, bundles it on her lap, and Jen wonders why this girl wears such interesting colors. Fuschia doesn’t match scarlet. Judy looks up at her and smiles. “Do you have siblings?” 

“No.” 

“Me neither. I always wanted a sister, though.” 

Jen nods, going for a casual reply, a part of her unexplainably nervous. She glances around, the noise of the place so raucous her thoughts turn to static; she rises into plié, tough in the leather of her boots, and then stomps back down, embarrassed by an old habit she can’t break. When she looks back at Judy, her tongue is poking out, wetting her bottom lip. The clink of plates and the thick Brooklyn intonation uttering "enjoy" are a relief. 

Judy turns to the counter and scoots over so there are inches of beige barstool available, says, “Squeeze on in,” over her shoulder.

“We are not sharing one seat.” 

“I know,” Judy says, half turning toward her, “at least stand next to me.”

Jen gives her a look, and Judy says, “How else will you eat? I don’t think we’re close enough to where I can feed you. Yet.”

She scrunches her nose. Yet… yeah, as if, Jen thinks, but despite, she obeys; she wedges in, lifting her knee onto the seat, and stands like a flamingo between two relative strangers; Judy, and a man with a thick white Santa Claus beard. They eat cramped together, each other a furnace, and Jen pretends not to notice when Judy has a drop of applesauce on her bottom lip, and she takes a big bite of her sandwich when Judy’s tongue darts out and licks it away.

*

“So, do I get to meet this Judy girl?”

Jen, in the middle of gulping water to cleanse the insipid taste of unseasoned poultry, regrets kicking dinner off with hey, I’m going on a road trip next week with Judy-you-don’t-know-her-Hale, great, now let’s eat this dry as fuck baked chicken.

“She is so shy,” Jen says, stabbing a steamed carrot slice with her fork. “She is like a feral cat. She might have a heart attack if she meets you. I, personally, do not want to hurt her heath.” 

“I don’t remember a Judy,” he says, like he’s really considering the list of her friends, he points his fork at her, “Is her full name Judith? You knew a Judith.”

“Dad, how can you possibly remember every single friend I had in school?”

“You had like three friends, kid.” He laughs, and Jen gives him a look across the table.

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s because you and mom forced me to go to Queen of the Rosary Catholic Academy, where every girl bragged about waiting till marriage as they did LSD in the bathroom.” 

“What, not your scene?” 

Jen laughs once he cracks a smile and the kitchen they sit in changes; it’s as if it’s years ago and the atmosphere they as a family maintain is back, light and loving, and it feels like a cruel joke, the rare moments they have where a rapport is easy, where he’s not mad at her for existing, and she wishes from the tender ache in her chest that it could always be like this. 

He says, “You know, when you get back from this trip, we really need to discuss your future,” and the fragile veil cracks and the kitchen dims, like a rain cloud covering the sun. 

“We really do not,” she finds herself vexed, reserved only in a way indignation induces. 

“What are you gonna do about school?” he asks this rather tentatively, and it’s almost worse than if he were angry. 

“I’m... I’ll just… I don’t know,” Jen says, eyeing the grooves in the dinner roll soaked in sauce on her plate, “I’ll get a job.”

“I can see if we need a receptionist or something at the office,” he says, and Jen looks up at him, looking down at his plate, still in his HVAC shirt, his name, there, Charlie, embroidered in red and blue, and there’s a sting in her eyes that begins to blur her vision as he only continues, “I’m not in the office much, we’ve been getting a lotta house calls, heaters going out and all, but I can stop in and see.” 

She bounces her leg, nervous energy coursing through her like an electric current, a shock from an outlet, ready to stop her heart. It ends there when she doesn’t reply; when dinner finishes with detached "love you's," and goodnights begin with ascending down the fire escape, Judy’s tinny voice saying, “So, you’ve really never been out of New York?” and the languid realization she might really, really hurt her dad. 

“I mean, I’ve left the city. I’ve been to the Hamptons. I guess I have been to Jersey.” She imagines Judy lying in bed, legs propped on the wall, toying with the cord of the phone. She imagines Judy in something soft, maybe floral, a polka-dotted pattern. Her breath hitches as the wind chill picks up. “But, Brooklyn’s… my life. I’ve lived in the same walk-up for 22 years.” 

“God, that’s so amazing.”

“How?”

“Well,” Judy begins, softly, “I’ve kinda been all over the place.” 

“Ah, the drifter life.”

“Exactly.” Jen has a feeling there’s something more there, beneath Judy’s words, a pearl at the center of the meaning she’s not granted.

“Is your dad excited for you?”

“What?”

“Oh,” Judy says, a tinge like she’s retroactively soothing a possible ache she induces over, “Is it not like that? Sorry, I think sometimes I assume things, which is always, always bad. What's the saying? About assuming? Something about ass?”

Jen looks in the direction of home, though far enough away that she can’t see her building, she picks the yellow glow of a small window anyway, melancholic. She puts four quarters into the machine. The conversation divulges into music, Judy listing off her favorite musicians and singers in a way that tells Jen that Judy thinks she’s living under a rock, listening to Christian Gospel exclusively. You say you don’t listen to Joni Mitchell once and suddenly you’re uncultured. 

“You know, Judy, I do listen to music.”

“Oh, no, no, I'm sorry, I’m sure you do.”

“My favorite song is "Easy to be Heard." So. There.”

“So, you like Three Dog Night, then?”

“Yeah, maybe I do.” Is it always this embarrassing to have someone care to know you?

“Noted,” Judy says, “Do you like Marvin Gaye? I love "Inner City Blues," his voice is just… ugh, so good.” 

Jen falls quiet, and she wishes she could be in the comfort of her room, lying in bed, or on the sill, smoking a cigarette. She wishes she didn’t have to reply, and she wants Judy to say something, to ramble on and on so she can listen, so she can be totally, entirely distracted. The realization that she wants to stay on the line with Judy hits her quickly enough that discomposure overcomes her, and the only thing she can think to do is, say, “Goodnight, Judy,” and hang up. 

*

There’s a pressing dread that comes with hanging up on someone who doesn’t have your number. 

It would be so much simpler if Judy could call her, if Judy could be the one to call her landline and say things like, “So, I listened to Three Dog Night, and I think "One Is The Loneliest Number" is my favorite of theirs,” as Jen lies on the couch and says, “I saw them live once years ago, it was the first time I did drugs,” and they could just talk, because for the first time in long enough it counts, Judy is someone Jen wants to talk to. 

On Wednesday night, though there’s light rain, and the city is hit with a wind chill so rough water flies sideways, she’s at the nearest phone booth saying, “So, what the hell is your favorite Joni Mitchell song?” the second Judy says hello.

“Oh, Jen…” And Judy’s tone is low enough that if it weren't so cold, it would be the reason for her shiver; the theme of the night is that of sovereign embarrassment. “This is a question with such an impossible answer.”

“She’s not that good, Judy.” 

“You haven’t listened to my cassette tapes yet, I see.” 

“I have, actually.”

“Wait, oh my God, really? So, what’s your favorite song? Mine is probably something off of "Hejira", but I put "Big Yellow Taxi" first ‘cause that was my introduction to Joni, and I think it’s a bit of a pumping up kind of vibe, despite the lyrics.”

Jen’s silent for a moment. She wants to say the right thing. She wants Judy to be pleased by her choice. “I think, I don’t know… I’ll need to listen again to really know.”

“Fair. There’s so much to take in with her. Plus, we have plenty of time,” there’s relief, then, as it seems Judy is going to carry the conversation, starts on about veggie hot dogs, and Jen thinks that must just be a steamed carrot. 

Judy says, “Wait, are you-are you outside? Like, at a payphone?”

How did Judy just notice this? 

Jen realizes there are sirens blaring. She turns to the street to see an ambulance going up the street, then three cop cars rush by. “Uh, yeah.”

“What, why? Do you not have a landline?”

“I do.” 

“Jen, it’s like… what, 28 degrees? Aren’t you freezing?”

Yeah, her fingers are fucking numb, and her feet burn from the dirty day-old slush of snow. “I’m fine. I’m tough.”

She hears Judy’s breath as if directly in her ear. “Care to show me just how tough?” 

(She thinks she can hear Judy grin through the phone. In spite of herself, she hopes Judy can hear her grin, too.)

Judy’s wild, and she should’ve known it. She had a feeling they were going to do something incredibly fucked up, like some strain of LSD exclusive to the Manhattan underground party scene, or rob a poor unassuming liquor store, possibly even lie on the floor of the L train and light up a joint and share it with a homeless guy. Judy asks her how tough she is and Jen’s prepared to show her. 

But all Judy does is tell her to meet at Highland Park, at the Cypress Hills stop, at the little convenience store on the Hemlock exit, and she’s not going to say no, she’s not going to look like any sort of _wimp_ , so she does exactly that even though the subway ride is just under an hour long. 

Judy leans against the underground brick, eating a Hostess cupcake, in the very same scarlet coat as always, her hair wavy, frizzy, tangled, like she’d been swept up in a hurricane on the way here, and she jumps when Jen stalks up, says, “Hey,” despite the lack of people filtering through at half-past 9. 

“Snuck up on me, there,” Judy says, then extends her arm forward, wiggling the half-eaten dessert, “bite?”

“No, thank you,” Jen says, leaning away, and she watches Judy shove the remainder into her mouth, gaining the cheeks of a chipmunk. 

Judy raises her eyebrows and nods her head toward the exit, and Jen nods back in confirmation. They walk up the stairs, leaving the faint hum of the subway behind, entering the growing hum of the street. Jen wants to ask what Judy’s thinking but doesn’t want to come off as like, tepid, or worried, or anything other than _game_. She follows Judy, Judy who has her hands shoved in her pockets, and walks like a baby deer in the leftover snow, for three blocks.

“So,” Judy says, abruptly stopping in front of a three-story walk-up, “this is where I’ve been staying.” 

“Alright,” Jen says, looking between the in-the-dark-green detailing around the windows, and Judy, her face set in a small smile, looking up at the place.

“Alright, follow me,” Judy says, and Jen does, despite lingering fear, praying she doesn’t have to talk to anyone who lives here, and it’s starting to really feel like she’s an Icarus heading toward the sun or whatever the fuck.

They walk up the few stairs to the front door, and Jen watches under the yellow glow of the porch light as Judy pulls out her keys from her pocket. She notices, for the first time, the width of her hands, broad and strong, her grip firm on the metal key as she sticks it in the keyhole, twists, and pushes in. Jen bites her tongue, and when Judy looks at her, she raises her eyebrows, and says, “We’re gonna go up to the roof.” 

“And do what?”

“You’ll see.”

Judy leads her through the vestibule, and it’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Judy goes to the right, down a narrow, barren walkway, and Jen focuses on the back of her head, illuminated by sconce lighting, thinking, please, no interactions, please, no interactions. Judy opens a door to what Jen assumes is the roof, and when they climb the metal stares, Jen steels her gaze on Judy’s shoes, embarrassed by the accidental staring at her ass, but it's right there, and absolutely not on purpose. 

There are patches of snow on the roof, and all Judy says is “we’re gonna yell.”

“Yell?” 

Judy smiles at her, nodding eagerly. “It feels so good.” And, no holds barred, she screams, not guttural but close, the word strawberries, and Jen doubles over in laughter. 

“Hey,” Judy’s suddenly got an arm around her back, a hand on her covered forearm, and she’s close enough that Jen can feel her silent laughter. “It’s fun, come on.”

Jen straightens, but Judy doesn’t let go. Jen can’t help herself, she matches Judy’s smile, and she thinks how strange all of this is, how she just met this girl, and now she’s on a rooftop listening to her scream into the night. Through her coat, she pictures the heat of Judy’s hands; it’s freezing, after all. Judy wears a forest green beanie and in the dark her eyes are black. 

Judy smiles, her gaze lifting to the sky as her lips part, and Jen watches as she leans her head back, and says, "it's so fucking cold" like she’s trying for God’s attention. 

“You go,” Judy says, and squeezes her arm, her teeth biting down on her bottom lip; so, Jen takes a deep breath, and tips her head to the hazy night sky, screams "orange", elongating the ‘a’, the ‘e’ at the end, Judy’s hand placed on her back as if dipping her, and when she’s upright again, Judy’s smile is so wide Jen could cry. She goes again, this time a plain, throaty scream. 

Judy laughs, bounces a little, and says, “See, it feels so good.”

Jen parts from her, and says, “I don’t know how that proves I’m tough, though.”

“I think tough just means brave,” Judy says, nearly looking dejected. She wraps her arms around herself, “takes bravery to let yourself go.” 

Jen doesn’t agree, and she pulls out her Marlboros. They share the last one, sitting on the roof side by side, crisscrossed, and Jen wonders how brave Judy’s had to be. Judy says she can’t wait until they're in the middle of nowhere and she can show her the stars, unpolluted. Judy says she’ll show her their shapes and tell her their names.

*

Packing up a life into one (albeit, oversized) duffle bag is both invigorating and depressing. Like graduating high school; the promise of the future as you leave all you know behind. She never thought her room was anything special, she couldn’t get it exactly how she dreamt it, her vision something directly out of a grunge spread of _Seventeen_ magazine, but now, the stupid Playbills she hangs on the wall, the Three Dog Night album cover, a faux polaroid of Gwen Verdon and Julie Andrews, a poster of her mom's favorite movie _Silk Stockings_ –it begs to be remembered. 

She prides herself on her lack of sentimentality, so it’s easy for her to leave behind little knick-knacks accrued overtime, like tickets from movies, shows, concerts, stupid photo booth pictures, tacky I Love New York memorabilia she somehow ended up with. She stuffs her spring and summer clothes together and decides she’ll bring one-fourth of her lighter winter apparel. 

She goes to the library and researches; rooms for rent in California, what’s the job market like, how often do you see famous people walking around L.A., is the Chateau Marmont really haunted? The unknown is thrilling, if only because it offers anonymity. She prints out room and job listings, and she wonders if she can get a California driver’s license. 

For a while, she thought her life would just get better; that she would graduate with her stupid little dance therapy degree, get some job she can live off of and move out and gain some space from her father and begin working on the relationship--that time would heal her, and her father and that life would pick up. But, then, she couldn’t register for the Spring semester on account of not passing one too many classes, which only further frustrates her, so she’s spent the last month and a half trying to fill her days with something other than wallowing. 

And then days melted with Judy, a girl who came out of nowhere like Hael, introducing a brand of kindness Jen’s not worthy of. Days are spent walking aimlessly around the city under snow flurries and slush, a visit to the video store to laugh at the ridiculous covers of romcoms (Judy, then, confessing she loved _Sleepless in Seattle_ , Jen, despite herself, agreeing it had its moments), the pinball place on 24th and 7th that serves pizza on Pac-man plates. Judy, in her scarlet coat with her peach-colored cheeks, Judy, buying a "We’ll Always Have New York" keychain in Times Square, Judy, telling her how funny she is when she really leans into her Brooklyn accent.

And then Jen hadn’t seen her in five days, isn’t sure if she’s staying away or if Judy’s busy, and she wonders why, really, she wants to hang around her, wonders how this random girl passing through where Jen’s spent her whole life has given her something to look forward to, wonders how she ended up in The Village walking on old cobblestone with patches of grey snow forging a path as Judy talks about how she nearly shaved her head last night. 

“So, tell me, Judy,” Jen says, “were you possessed?”

“I personally like the shaved head look,” Judy says, “I mean, Sinéad O'Connor in the "Nothing Compares 2U" music video?” Judy shoots her a look like she’s waiting for Jen’s agreement, so she shrugs. “Well, anyway, I thought it would be fun, but the clippers I had wouldn’t turn on.”

“A possible blessing, I’m thinking.” 

Judy laughs, says, “oh, whatever,” and as they continue walking, she asks if Jen knows the nearest metaphysical supply store. 

(Crystals are a strange thing. Rocks having powers… almost as nonsensical as an omniscient dude in the sky. But, of course, Judy Hale has an affinity for crystals and, evidently, all things spiritual. Judy says she wants to make money through tarot readings as if Jen knows anything about tarot.)

“You’re like, actually into this? Spirituality?”

Judy glances at her, smiling despite being questioned. “I am. You aren’t?”

Jen laughs. Waxing ex-Catholicism is not her prerogative, but she does enjoy letting people know her hatred for organized religion. 

“I went to Catholic school. Baptized, confirmation, communion, catechism... all the fucking works.”

“Catechism? Like the pee tube?” 

“Like the religious teachings, Judy.” 

“Huh. Maybe they should rebrand that?”

“Yeah.”

“So, you’re not anymore? Not Catholic, I mean?”

“Fuck, no, fucking fuck no.”

Judy giggles and it sounds like joy, unfelt, unseen for so long Jen’s urge is to kill it before her, say something brief and mean and unprompted, though when she looks at Judy, this girl she’s trying to figure out, her bangs blowing in the brisk wind chill of a late February evening, streetlights, car lights, the reflection of signage washing across her face, illuminating her as if she’s on stage, as if she demands _watch me_ … it fucking works, and Jen’s only real motivation is to make her laugh again. And she likes the fact that she has the time to. 

*

Judy did not lead the day’s plans with tattooing, but Jen’s learning that this girl is spontaneous, the type to absolutely wake up one morning and say, gee, today I’ll get a tattoo of a lilypad because they’re pretty. 

They meet three blocks south of Jen’s place, a spot Judy’s coined at theirs, which Jen thinks is funny, _their's_ , as if they weren’t two people two weeks ago who had never crossed paths. It’s a popular flower stand in the warmer months, selling a few plants that survive during the winter in the colder, and every time Jen’s met Judy there, Judy’s in the middle of a conversation with the owner about wanting to grow her own food eventually. The vegetarian agenda, Jen supposes. 

“Thank you for coming with me.” It’s one of those unexpected late winter snowfalls, and it’s clear that Judy, with her windbreaker, thought it more of a spring day. 

“Oh,” Jen shrugs in her big coat, “Not like I have anything better to do.” 

She watches as Judy blinks away flecks of snow, tipping her head up with a tiny smile, snow now on her lips, the small magic of it something out of a kid’s fairytale book, reminding her of the joy in catching snow on your tongue.

“This is gonna be my first tattoo.”

“First?” She thought Judy more than likely has tattoos in expanses unseen. Like, of The Sun tarot with the horse and naked baby, or something. 

“First. I don’t know why, but I just needed to get it today. Something cosmic, probably.”

“What’s the date? I heard about Mercury retrograde the other day. Not like I believe it, but, you do. So. Maybe it’s that.”

“It’s February 21st.” 

“Ah. Okay. Yeah. I don’t know. But, just so you know, my first tattoo hurt like a fucking bitch.” 

As Judy glances at her she stumbles into the person walking in front of them uttering a sorry, then, “You have a tattoo?” 

“Yup,” Jen says, “On my hip. Stick and poke.”

“The hip, huh?” 

“My ex-boyfriend did it.”

“Oh my, well, I hope it doesn’t say his name.”

Jen laughs. “No. It’s supposed to be an outline of like, a cat, I guess.”

They stand at the edge of the sidewalk, waiting for the crosswalk to blare their chance to go. Judy looks at her, very obviously freezing cold, and Jen, knowing she’s got three layers on underneath, momentarily contemplates giving her coat over to the girl whose teeth are chattering, lips bound to turn blue any second. 

“Supposed to be?” 

Judy sneezes. 

“Do you want my coat?” 

“Oh, no,” the little stick figure says cross, and when they step out into the street, Judy says, “That’s okay.”

Jen stops within the parameters of yellow lines and begins unbuttoning her coat, and it takes Judy a second to realize, but when she does, she stops a few feet ahead and quickly turns around in the small sea of pedestrians. She bites her tongue at Judy’s light, confused smile, and then says, “If you get the fucking flu, then what?” and hands her coat over. As if the snow knew of their exchange, it picks up. Judy thanks her with far too much fervor, and they continue on. 

She tries not to let the plum heat of her face show as Judy grabs onto her upper forearm when they enter a busier street. She tells herself it’s normal, that they’re friends now, and that, really, this closeness, it’s practice for later, when it’s skin-on-skin, when she grasps Judy’s hand as a needle digs into her ribs, and she has to focus on Judy’s pointy nose instead of her bare stomach, as Judy winces, and bites her lip, and makes little noises Jen can’t get out of her head for days. 

*

The peachy glow of a 6:31 sunrise paints the walls as if knowing this is her last morning here, in her room that hasn’t seen soft light in months. She lies on top of her bed, aware of the raw coolness of the space, her nipples uncomfortably hard against the rough, scratchy material of an old t-shirt that swallows her whole. She thinks of Judy and hopes her tattoo is healing okay. 

She watches with bleary, puffy eyes as shadows shape around objects, twist around the room perfectly, as if a part of a learned routine practiced for months, now on debut. She laughs, low and gravely, at the wetness of her cheeks, puddles with whole universes she steels off. She tries to give herself a moment to sob until she can’t breathe, until passing out is her body’s way of protecting her, but it doesn’t come. Her eyes water, her chest is heavy with the weight of a thousand changes, and she can’t even fully cry.

She supposes she’ll go get a bagel, and smoke a cigarette, and cling to this last vestige of familiarity. Her life now, come the next morning, will be fresh, and boundless, and no one will know her. She will not be the girl in 4D who took a golf club to an in-mint-condition-1980’s-Porsche. She will sit on the beach at dusk, the sea breeze crisp and revitalizing, damp on her cheeks like an early, misty morning, the past behind her. 

Judy Hale sits in her mind as if an old friend she never got closure with; she’s constantly thinking of her in little instances, hearing a song and picturing Judy’s face while listening, the possible twitch of a facial muscle, a smile when hearing the right lyrics. She hears "Cloudbusting" by Kate Bush in a record store in Flatbush and wonders if Judy likes the distinctness of the instrumental background, Kate Bush’s powerful, tender voice as she sings, _like the sun coming out, ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen._ She tells herself to remember this specific line, to recount it to Judy, and ask if she knows it; did it make you feel as if Kate Bush is right?

(She finds that Judy's presence grounds her, stops her in her tracks with a grasp of a hand that says I see you, and I think you see me, too, and in a strange stroke of surprise, she wants to learn more about Judy Hale from California who wears her sweaters backwards and inside out.) 

Later, after dinner with her dad that she blocks out as her last for a long while, she meets Judy at the Washington Plaza subway stop, and they take the train to Coney Island.

It’s a long, listless ride, and as the train sways, Judy leans into her, her hand slapping Jen’s, curling around her on the bar. Judy’s rings are cool against her hand, her fingers as hot as Jen’s, and it’s a moment before it’s finished Jen can see herself looking back on, thinking how content she was on a Brighton Beach bound train, the night of February 28th, 1997, when it’s years passed and she’s married with kids in a housing development in Somewhere, California, when Judy is a footnote in her life, the girl she spent two spontaneous weeks with roaming her city, an international, cross country road trip, dingy motels with lime green shag carpet, a variant of fast food for every meal, when she felt genuine, surreal happiness for the first time in years. She’ll look back on this moment and think of Judy, the subway, the arctic cool of her rings, and sigh melodramatically, swallowed by the sinkhole of knowing that this is the best time of her life; she tells herself to remember this as if she were taking a photograph. 

When they get to the beach, they find a large slab of driftwood snug in the sand, sit thigh to thigh, and Judy immediately starts commenting on how cold it is, saying, “Oh, I didn’t think it would be this freezing.”

“It’s February on the east coast at the beach at night.”

“Uh-huh. Right.”

Judy rummages through her purse, a beat-up brown bag with felted red roses, and pulls out, what looks to be, a joint. 

“Uh, what the fuck are you doing?” Jen says, immediately thinking she sounds like such a narc.

“Relax,” she says, the base sitting between her lips like a cig, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Hm, well, Judy. Number one: we get caught and we go to fucking jail.”

Judy gives her a look, hard to discern in the deep blue hues of night, but it’s something like can you calm down, please. Judy lights the joint, inhales, the hollow of her throat constricting, becoming prominent. The wind blows the light out as Judy exhales, so Jen cups her hands around the joint signaling for Judy to re-light it. The pads of her fingers touch Judy’s chin as she drops them, an accidental gesture that locks their eyes, Judy’s wide like that of a deer in headlights. Judy inhales, and the moment Jen keeps, dies. 

Judy offers the joint to her, and with reluctance, Jen shakes her head ‘no’. “That’s why you wanted to come all the way to the beach? To smoke?”

Judy shrugs, and with a smirk that tells Jen Judy doesn’t believe she doesn’t want it, she says, “I know you’ve smoked pot before, Jen.”

“Fuck off, you sound like my dad.” Judy laughs, loud and unrestrained like the sea, and Jen feels proud. “I’m a pipe kinda girl.” 

“Oh, I see,” Judy says, her voice turning hoarse. Jen takes the joint, the small, lumpy circularness foreign between her fingers, she puts it between her lips and inhales. It immediately feels nice.

Judy laughs and says, “You look calmer already.” 

They fall quiet, passing the joint. She feels light, fuzzy, and craves hot chocolate. Jen digs her shoes in the sand, a moment reminiscent of walking with her grandma along this very expanse of the beach as a kid, hopping from sand to sidewalk, being told to stop because she’ll get rocks in her shoes and no one’s gonna help her get them out. It might be her last time here for a while, so maybe Judy’s desire to smoke weed in the sand isn’t such a bad thing. She watches Judy take a hit, how her cheeks puff, how her eyes flutter closed and her chest rises like the slow hum of earth. The air is damp and smells like funnel cakes, powdery sugar somehow sifting through the sea breeze. She times the faint crashing of waves to the shore with the beat of her heart. 

“Thank you,” she says, the high affecting her; she feigns rigidness, falls flat. 

“For what?” Judy says, her cheeks puffing as she takes a hit. Judy then turns to her, pokes her cheeks, and the smoke blows in Jen’s face. Judy’s inches apart, lidded eyes roaming Jen’s face, and Jen thinks that if this were a movie, and if she were a man, a kiss would fit here, the natural flow of events. 

Jen leans away. “For coming into my life.” 

“Well, you kinda came into my life,” Judy says. Mist dampens her face, and Jen feels weird for noticing. 

Jen rolls her eyes. “I guess that’s true.” 

Judy grins, the very definition of a lazy smile. “I’m glad you did. I’m glad you answered me, and that I’m not stuck with some greasy boy for days on end.” 

Jen laughs, her knee knocking into Judy’s own, once, on accident, twice, on purpose. 

It’s as if these days exist in a vacuum of time that's only theirs. The night is this: a joint smoked, two hot chocolates downed, the agreement that Kate Bush is right, and Jen painfully aware that if she had a Judy Hale with her, here, always, like some sort of loyal sidekick, she would not want to leave Brooklyn at all.


	3. soon turned out had a heart of glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so, so much to those who left a sweet comment on the last chapter. they were very motivating when writing this chapter, and i just overall really appreciate anyone who takes the time to read! <3 
> 
> chapter title is from 'heart of glass' by blondie (have been listening to the miley cyrus cover on repeat iykyk) 
> 
> anyway, thanks again for the kindness towards the last chapter, and i hope you enjoy this one!

_Everything_ is heightened on the morning of March first.

Sunshine smathers the kitchen like warm butter, a half-full carafe of coffee burns against the palm of her hand, the pads of her fingers; she pours the liquid into a mug of white and then sips it, the taste bitter, almost like it’s gone sour.

In the morning, the kitchen shifts into a sunroom. She thinks of glowy almost spring 8am's, her mom in a peachy robe, the hint of vanilla in french toast, sticky syrup and too sweet strawberries. She clears a space for the memory and tries to tattoo it, branding it over with an iron, ceramic searing against hot skin.

Jen’s decided that since she’s 22 she should drink simple black coffee, and not drown it with a vat of caramel creamer. No job, but if anyone asks, she drinks her coffee black. She thinks being 22 is something like being 12—when you’re supposed to be acting way, way older than you actually are. When you’re embarrassed because you haven’t quite got it all figured out. 22 feels too old to not know what’s going on, too young to be totally self-assured, and like she’s missing a page out of an operational manual she’s yet to even be given.

Judy’s 20, and Jen wonders if she ever feels anything like she’s waiting for a missed bus.

There are a few unfolded newspapers decorating the blonde wood of the breakfast nook, the front page headline exclaiming “Police Slay 2 Bank Robbery Suspects in a Wild Gun Battle” and upon further reading, she learns that it happened in North Hollywood. As she sits down, she knows it’s her dad who displayed the article for her viewing pleasure. A “watch out,” because life out west is weird; life in “Hollyweird” as he calls it, is not to be trusted.

She fixes her stare out the window, eye level with the sky, and she lifts the mug to her cheek. It mimics her mom who used to secure the heat to her face in the morning; in the midst of facial swelling this was always a small comfort for her. It's now a small comfort for Jen like somehow it shows she doesn’t shy away from the worst of it; like somehow it bridges the memory of her mom then, the visible effects of chemotherapy weighing on her, and Jen now, sitting at the kitchen table with her morning coffee.

The measly part of her that’s been swayed into believing in heaven, in being watched over, in the idea that her mom knows of her past choices, her future mistakes, the part of her that can’t help but indulge in that little piece of safety, sits, and stares, and hopes—hopes that if this life venture were the worst decision she could possibly make, there would’ve been some sign stopping her. Jen would like to think if there is a God, she’s not been given up on just yet.

When she finishes her coffee, she uses soap and water and a sponge, and she doesn’t leave the mug in the sink to sit. It’s what’s asked of her daily, “just rinse it, Jen, it won’t kill you,” and it’s a brand of defiance she pointlessly revels in. She places it on the drying rack, a goodbye note.

*

It’s as if she has stepped out of her consciousness, blacked outed, greened out, something just as unnerving as a total loss of control would be; when the time comes, she stands in the vestibule with her dad and gives him a quick hug, then a passive see you in a few weeks. It’s as if she’s forgotten the unruly truth to this, her mind glacial to the reality she’s enabling.

There’s this strange sense of melancholia swirling around her, knowing that if her mom were here sending her off, there would be crying and one too many full-bodied hugs. It's the first time she's done this kind of thing, moving across the country isn't something you do every day (Jen had never thought of herself as act first, think second but she's gaining a track record for it, so, touche, she guesses), and this is the first time she's gone on any sort of extended stay from home in years. it's the first time her mom's not here to hug her, and stroke her hair, and tell her she loves her, and that she's going to do big things while away.

(The first time Jen spent the weekend sans parents, she was 14 and it was for a dance competition. Her mom stood there on the porch with her, silently crying, as if Jen were being shipped off to war and she was trying to be strong for the family's sake. It was only an overnight event on Long Island, but you wouldn’t have known that by the tears. Jen never understood it, never got her mom's need to cry for something so minimal, for an over the weekend trip with her dance troupe—anytime after then, when Jen went away without her mom, there was crying at the send-off. At 14, she thought her mom was overly sensitive. At 22, she knows the crying was born from a place of love. She should've savored it.)

“Traffic might be bad since it’s a Saturday,” her dad says, his hands shoved in the front pockets of his jeans. “Good thing you guys are leaving around 10:30, though. Escape before the crazies hit the street, ya know.” He shrugs his shoulders with a slanted smile, and all Jen can manage is a nod.

She opens the front door and hears, “Maybe when you get back, your friend Judy can come for dinner?” as her dad follows behind her. She turns around and on the front porch is the first time she notices her dad’s hair has gone from salt and pepper to much more prominent grey. His eyes are heavy like a bloodhound’s, a crisp blue in the day. She wonders when she stopped realizing her dad is getting older, or if she was ever even observant enough.

“Judy would probably love to come for dinner,” she says, guilty for separate reasons that blend into one: she doesn’t know when she’ll be back, and it certainly won’t be with Judy.

They stand there, silent, the sun hitting her bare face, her cheeks growing hot, her forehead beginning to dampen with a fine film of sweat. It’s sorta nice, the first sign of heat after a long winter, like when you find refuge in a coffee shop after trudging through snow, except this, direct sunlight from a sky of puffy, cloudy blue, it’s a hopeful, prolonged solace; a new beginning entering the threshold, fortifying.

Jen has to squint her eyes as she glances around, the metal of cars reflecting light. The sidewalk is littered with soda cans and glass beer bottles and murky, dirty snow, cars lining up like a fence. She taps her foot. Judy’s late. Not by an hour or anything, but by enough time that Jen’s annoyed. Worried, too, but, well, that’s because, within the short amount of time Jen’s known Judy, she’s been pretty damn punctual.

“You don’t have to wait out here with me.”

“Oh,” he says, gruff, and maybe with a hint of disappointment, “If you don’t want me to, I don’t have to.”

“It’s fine. Judy’s not usually late, she’ll probably be here any second.”

He drops her duffle bag on the white wood, and Jen side-eyes him, gives a small smile, and he gives her shoulder a squeeze goodbye. She holds her breath until the sound of the door clicks. It will be easier if he's not here, sending her off; if she’s light and unrooted, and without the surveyor whose opinion means so much.

She has a sudden worry that she’s forgotten something, a pang to the chest like the swift remembrance of a bittersweet childhood memory, so she leans down unzips the packed bag, carefully, because zipping it in the first place was fucking hell, and thankfully it’s there, to the side just as she placed it, staring at her with it’s stitched on smile, eyes buttons of black, and the relief a crocheted stuffed dog gives her at 22 is only a little bit embarrassing.

After she re-zips, she grasps at the straps of her mini backpack snug against her shoulders. A mother and child walk by, the kid in red rain boots, utterly prepared for a spring shower. Jen eyes them as they walk past and continue on; she often wonders if she’ll ever be a mother and if she'd even be any good at child-rearing. She’s not sure she has the heart for it.

Then, a car slams to a stop in the middle of the one-way street. Judy Hale pops out, and she angles around the car; her face is beat red like a fresh sunburn. Jen realizes she hadn’t even known what car Judy has, the car they would be traveling in, and it’s like, oh, of course, Judy has a Subaru, what else would she drive, a Porsche?

Judy says, “Hey, oh, God, I’m so sorry I’m late,” as she hops up the steps. 

“Hi,” Jen says, and the furrowing of Judy’s brows and her visibly clenched jaw—Jen worries something bad has happened, worries it’s something she has no business asking, let alone knowing.

“God, I’m just,” Judy squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head _,_ “ _so,_ sorry I’m late. The car just, it wouldn’t start, and then when it did, I hit a bit of traffic, and—”

“The car wouldn't start?” Jen tries not to gawk. 

“Yeah,” Judy winces, “It does that.”

“Well...” Jen does a once over, and it’s this: Judy’s fists balled against either side of her thighs, her left knee bending as if giving out, her breath in puffs, shallow as if coming down from a run. Jen’s not thinking about the car. She straightens, inches above Judy, her head tipped only slightly up. “You’re okay, though?”

“Oh, me?” Judy does a little nervous sounding laugh, and Jen wonders who this Judy is, and why she’s only now meeting her. 

“Yes,” Jen says, nodding, “Like, you’re fine? It was just the car?” 

“Yes,” Judy says, and she nods back, her eyes wary like she’s unsure of the route of this conversation, and where it will end up, “I’m okay.”

“Alright.” Jen holds eye contact for a moment of confirmation, and when she gets it, the crinkle in the outer-edges of Judy’s eyes, she then leans down and grabs the strap of her duffle bag. When she’s eye level with Judy again, Judy only nods, head hung low like an ashamed golden retriever, and Jen doesn’t know what to do. 

“Well,” Jen says, attempting a catalyst signifying “I’m not angry,” without a verbal incantation. She settles on, “I’m ready. If you are.”

Judy smiles softly. “You’ve got everything?” 

“Yup,” and Judy’s eyes are pools of honey in the light, and Jen thinks the sunlight grants solace in more ways than one. She gestures to the car, and as they walk down the steps, Jen tells herself not to look back. No last glance at the porch, no last glance at the front door, no last singular memory of her home she’ll have lodged within her as _final_. 

As she sticks her duffle in the trunk, she focuses on the knitted blankets of all colors strewn across the back sea, and the couple lilac covered pillows stacked in twos, the white and red cooler sitting on the floor behind the driver’s seat. She has a feeling she’ll remember Judy, flushed, frazzled, on the porch, the sun a halo, and she thinks, if there’s one memory that must be her last here, it’s this. 

When she walks around the car to the passenger side, she allows herself to stare at brown, dead weeds poking through the chain of the fence, snow melting onto the ash of the sidewalk. Jen’s heartbeat is in her throat, a chill on her back as if jumping into icy waters; she looks to the house right before opening the car door, she can’t help herself. She hears Judy saying something about how odd it is, how warm it suddenly has become, and her dad’s there in the kitchen window. He catches her glance, waves with a crooked side smile; Jen returns it, doesn’t linger, and gets into the car. Her gums tingle, her mouth-watering like she’s going to throw up. She coughs close to a gag, and thankfully Judy doesn’t comment. In the car, it smells of lemon verbena, bitter and hot. 

(Jen wants to look again. She wants to stare at the white wood and paneled windows, she even wants her dad to still be there as if she were looking out into the audience of a recital, the sight of him an encouragement like no other. She doesn’t allow it, even though a very, very big part of her knows she’ll regret it.)

Judy’s doing something in the trunk, what sounds like rearranging, and she thinks Judy asks her how she fits her life into one bag. Judy mentions Abba and a cassette she found at a thrift store, how it doesn’t even have “Voulez-Vous” on it, so what’s the point, really. Jen’s nausea stays, and she turns, looking through the car to Judy, and she says, “I’m shocked no one’s yelled at us yet. We better go before one of your mirrors gets yanked right off.” 

“Yep!” Judy says, and Jen watches the waves in her hair flow. Since knowing Judy, Jen’s thought Judy moves in a lucid, languid way. She’s like a ragdoll. Jen thinks she could grab Judy, shake her, and in return, Judy would ask Jen what she wants for lunch. 

Judy stumbles back, makes an oof noise, and Judy isn’t graceful but it’s as if she demands Jen’s attention, like a kindergarten ballerina. Judy straightens, they make eye contact, and Judy smiles before shutting the trunk. It’s a reassurance, Judy’s smile, that Jen’s red by. Jen turns in her seat, and when Judy gets into the car, she looks funny, so small as commander of this vehicle. Jen watches as Judy sighs, and undoes her coat, the deep red fabric of it slumping behind her. 

“Alright, say a prayer!” Judy grasps the curved leather of the steering wheel and looks at her with wide eyes, “Or...sorry. Don’t. You just sit there and look pretty.” 

Jen tightens her grip on the mini backpack in her lap. She’s not sure she likes that. Judy then turns the key in the ignition and when the car starts, she wiggles her shoulders and beams at Jen, and Jen automatically smiles back, something like a ripple effect.

“Okay, now that the car’s turned on,” Judy says, and she cranes her body, her arm reaching behind their seats. The plunge of Judy’s henley faces Jen; Judy’s olive skin is a sharp contrast against white cotton. Jen looks away when the shadow of Judy’s breast becomes prominent, ashamed by a feeling she can’t discern.

“You, Jen, are the map girl.” 

“Ah, my official title. Great.” Jen takes the folded up map and sets it in her lap. She unzips her coat, and she thinks Judy’s watching _her_. She glances over, and she’s right. 

Jen’s suddenly very aware of how warm she’s become, as if the heat of a stage light shines directly on her—as if she’s being tested, and studied, and knows she better not slip up. 

Judy’s eyes are pleading. “How are you?”

Jen leans into the car door. “I’m...fine.”

“If you’re sad, that’s okay,” Judy says, “this is like, the biggest change of your life.” 

No, not quite. “I’m not sad.” 

“Okay,” Judy says, acquiescence in her tone, “that’s okay, too.”

Jen considers Judy for a moment. She thinks this is what they call “checking in,” but she can’t be sure. She quickly finds that saying, “Maybe I’m a little tired,” doesn’t fill her with anxious dread, a fear that her weakness will be laughed at, rather it gives her a sense of relief, something light, and almost airy. 

Judy tilts her head and looks at her like the school nurse does when you’re a kid and you tell them your stomach hurts, and Jen thinks if she grew up with an empathetic head tilt aimed at her every once in a while that maybe she’d be a good person now. 

“Didn’t sleep well?” Judy says. 

Jen shakes her head. She had laid in bed and thought of everything. How Christmas won’t be in New York anymore, how her next birthday will be in the desert of California, how one day she never thought leaving Brooklyn would happen, and now—she never in a million years thought she’d be here, in a random girls Subaru about to escape to California. It’s like her mother’s death all over again, never knowing if a moment was her last.

(She thinks, maybe, that's life at large.) 

Judy reaches out, and Jen tries not to back away. She ends up with Judy’s hand on her knee, saying, “Well, you’ve got like, 8 hours to rest. Have you eaten?”

“Yeah,” Jen says, something close to uncomfortable at the implication that Judy cares about that sort of thing. Jen repositions, extends her legs forward, and Judy’s hand falls and she retracts and Jen wonders if she’s lost the gift of such an intimacy before even understanding it might be something she wants. 

“Okay, good. I do have some food,” Judy gestures to the back, the image of the cooler resurfacing for Jen (fuck, she thinks, why didn’t I think of bringing her any food?), “And if you want we can pick up some snacks when we get gas. I think I saw one like, a few blocks away.”

“Oh, no, we get gas in Jersey.”

Judy gives a confused glance, so Jen continues, “It’s cheaper.”

“Huh, okay,” Judy nods, and Jen thinks it’s something close to endearing, the way Judy listens intently and absorbs every inch of information (and maybe Jen does anxiously wait for it to be reiterated), “so is that why you’ve been to New Jersey? To fill up the tank?”

“Kind of,” Jen says, and does not continue, because starting their trip with, “I’ve only been to Hoboken in order to see my mom for her last rounds of chemo,” is kind of a buzzkill. 

“Alrighty, well—” Judy flinches, and Jen whips around, the sound of honking timed like an alarm. 

“Hey, what the fuck?” is bull-horned from the car behind them, muffled by the enclosure of their space, and Jen scoffs, turning back around in her seat.

Judy’s wide-eyed, like she hasn’t been the victim of a Brooklyn man’s road rage—and she probably hasn’t. “It’s fine, Judy, just start driving and—”

“Fucking move, come the fuck on!”

“Oh, my gosh, okay,” Judy says, hastily putting her seatbelt on. 

And Jen… well, she figures why not give as much as they’re getting. “Wait,” she tells Judy, and she rolls her window down, sticks her head out and glares at this guy shielded by his fancy fucking BMW. As he sirens his horn again, Jen yells, “Fuck off, ya fuckin’ asshole,” and gives him the middle finger. 

Immediately, he’s saying “hey, fuck you too,” giving the finger right back. Sorta futile. Jen slumps back into her seat, rolls the window back down, and says, “Judy, just go now,” with a hearty huff.

“Oh my God, Jen, your accent,” and Judy looks fucking _thrilled_. 

“Yeah, yeah, just floor it,” and the sound of a car horn follows behind them for three blocks.

*

The air circulated within the car is stale and warm, and the windows fog every few minutes. She watches Brooklyn disappear in the wing mirror and tries not to think of all the places she’s known her whole life as the last time she’ll see them, but she knows it’s the truth at least for a little while, and it’s enough for her to start the long list of I wish I would’ve.

The Williamsburg Bridge takes them downtown, into the Lower East Side, and she eyes the water below. The glass-like stillness of it, how it looks like it could shatter with one hit to the surface, like a mirror or something as delicate as an open heart. 

As they pass by high-rise buildings that for years have been solitary background characters, only now does it feel like some sort of regeneration, like she’s seeing it all for the first time. It starts in her chest and spreads across her skin, and her shoulders feel like she’s being pricked with tiny little knitting needles. She thinks about how she won’t be taking the bridge downtown for soup dumplings anymore, how she’ll have to find a new spot in California. How thrilling and how sickening and a mirage of confusion that is. She cranes her body forward, the seatbelt pressing into her neck, digging into her chest, and she tries to see if there is anyone walking on the visible pathway above them. She almost feels like a cat trapped in a cage planning it’s meticulous escape route, about ready to claw metal wires and make herself bleed. 

Incessant honking is as endearing as it’s ever been as clips of buildings, and shops and people live in the mirrors, only a moment, like a still from a movie, until they disappear underground through Holland Tunnel, exiting Manhattan, white tile of the walls glaring like a strobe light as they slowly move through bumper to bumper traffic. She has never felt claustrophobic until now. 

Jersey City is met at the tail end of a panic attack. Sun hits them as they emerge from the tunnel and it’s akin to coming up for air when swimming. Jen thinks she curbs the anxiety by listening to Judy talk about how she likes to make her own soap, and how she thinks selling it at Farmer’s Markets could be fun. Jen focuses on Judy’s inflections, her high pitchy vowels, and nasally sometimes consonants and she tells herself to count to Judy’s voice as if she were counting to music. Never has a person’s voice been such a sedative. 

They split the cost of gas right down the middle, and Judy says they’ll do exactly that for the motel tonight...if they can find a vacancy. It all feels dangerously spontaneous, this not knowing their sleeping arrangements ordeal. 

Judy’s apologetic as she pumps gas, leaning down into the silhouette of the car door, she mentions the very real possibility of sleeping in the car if they can’t find a spare room, with the backseat full of blankets and pillows, and having to curl up together for warmth—Jen thinks if this were the case on any of their nights together she’ll sleep in the passenger seat, alone. 

(It is kinda fun, though, zero concrete plans with “all the time in the world,” as Judy says.) 

When they pass the turnpike, the highway shoves them into Newark, and East Orange, and it’s all nothing special, and all something like a disappointment. Soon, they’re in small towns along the freeway called Rockaway, and Stanhope, and Panther Valley, marked by road signs that say population 3,000, and by glimpses of cookie-cutter homes through bare branch trees. Jen thinks about the people who live there, whole lives deeply planted, and how she’s a brief voyeur. She wonders if that’s what people feel when they are visiting in New York, and she wonders if by the next time she’s in the city, if she will have lost that familiarity and adopted that stranger mentality. 

Jen had thought Judy would be a talker, given hours and the open road, that she would roll into various spirals about like, essential oils, for soothing and for sleep, or of poetry, of someone like Louise Glück and the isolation of living. Jen had prepared herself for the coming days, told herself that she would just have to get through being sewed at the hip, and then that’s that. It's just under an hour in, and Judy’s mostly stared pensively at the road, only a handful of words shared. Something like how soap sold in stores has parabens and dyes, her head bobbing from side to side like she studies the yellow lines and seems to really consider them, making Jen believe Judy could have a respectful, honoring conversation with a leaf. 

Once the city disappears behind her, it feels like acceptance—she’s really left, no longer is this the hypothetical. Now, Jen hasn’t thought much else other than why Judy isn’t talking to her. She worries that the time they spent together over the last two weeks didn’t mean anything for Judy as it did for Jen, that Judy’s suddenly done with her and regrets allowing Jen to come along, and isn’t talking much because—

The open land of New Jersey is marked by a stark white billboard with “I NEED A KIDNEY” in black block print, a phone number beneath the plea. 

Judy says, “God, that’s depressing,” as they pass the sign and Jen thinks it’s a reflection of Judy, that she voices it—Jen thinks she’s seen a million flyers and billboards and ads begging for a kidney, a liver, a blood transfusion… she’s numb to it, not thinking twice when she reads “it’s life or death,” above the cost. She watches naked trees pass, some with a layer of snow, some without, the side of the road a Brooklyn sidewalk with trash as a garnish. Dozens of cars share the wide highway; it’s all one big snow globe, perfect until turned upside down.

Jen considers what telling Judy that her mom’s dead might be like. She thinks Judy is someone who may gush with sympathy, and what else does one give when you tell them your mom’s dead, and from something as outwardly shitty as cancer. The dead mom thing is always gonna come up, she knows it’s not something she can escape—even in her new life in California, even in her new friendship with Judy. 

She doesn’t really want to tell Judy anything, though, nothing incriminating, at least. She wants to be a fresh, clean slate with Judy, someone who is mysterious, and elusive, and someone who can be well-liked. Jen knows there’s plenty irredeemable that can fix her as a bad person. Sabotaging the good isn’t what she looks for any longer. 

She thinks of the last two weeks, how much of it was spent with Judy, and how she should’ve spent more time with her dad. Judy clung to her last night at the beach, actually, really, grabbed her upper arm with soft knitted mittens and held on. Held on as they stopped for hot chocolates, held on during the subway ride back into Queens, leaned into her like a drunken girl in the public bathroom of a cocktail bar at every curve the train takes. Held on as Jen walked her home, and up the steps and into the vestibule. Jen had undone Judy’s coat as if she were a wife undoing a husband’s tie. Judy was high and needed help, and Jen was less high and wanted to make herself useful. 

(Judy introduces a touch Jen knows she’s had, but was yet to welcome. She’d like to say that Judy imprinted on her like a baby duck, but she thinks she’s the one who has gone and done the imprinting and is now being led and taught and given a sense of safety.) 

There had been a quiet lull of music filling the car, soft background noise like the barely-there score in a movie. Her attention is garnered by “reach out and touch faith” and the constant of electric cords, and then “someone to hear your prayers” draws out and she starts laughing. 

“What?” Judy says, looking at her, owning a smile, too.

“God, sorry, it's just,” she shakes her head; of course Depeche Mode would come on, and of course Judy has it on tape, “whenever I hear this song it makes me laugh because, in 11th grade, I did a fucking routine to this song.”

“Wait, like, a dance?” It seems to pique Judy’s interest. 

“Yes,” Jen says with a breathless laugh. “It was so ridiculous.” 

Judy smiles like she’s been told something special, an entrusted secret. And maybe it’s exactly that. “I didn’t know you danced.” 

“Yeah,” Jen says with a shrug of a shoulder, “from two to eighteen,” she takes a deep breath, “I actually wanted to be a dancer professionally.” The failure aspect of it makes it like she’s standing on a cliff waiting for a gust of wind; like maybe she is okay with Judy knowing her missteps.

Judy says, “Oh, wow,” with a breathless air to her voice and Jen takes a moment to revel in relief, thinking that maybe her guard is far too high, that Judy’s not one to take and twist the knife, “Like, a ballerina?”

“Yeah,” Jen says, embarrassed because it truly was her dream from ages five to fifteen, “and then I got told I wasn’t lean enough or tall enough. So, they stuck me in jazz contemporary, and I was pretty fucking good, I can’t lie to you, Judy.”

“I appreciate your honesty, Jen.” She can hear Judy’s smile as she says, “I have no doubt.” 

Jen eyes an upcoming Exxon gas sign, the bright red grabbing her and sticking her in the summer of 1992, the mid-July she and her parents drove over to the Hamptons, through green grass hills and had stopped for gas, and got snacks at the station, had something quick like McDonald’s as they talked of buttery lobster rolls, and frozen strawberry lemonade, hot grainy sand, and cool smooth waters, of a hopeful, sunny beach day. She remembers that summer vividly; the last days of remission before it got worse. 

Jen continues, “I always hoped I’d do some sort of Fosse on Broadway, but, I mean, not many people make it to Broadway.” 

“What made you stop?” Judy asks, and she takes a sip of water. Jen watches as Judy’s lips curl around the nozzle of the bottle. She finds that her eyes go to Judy’s throat when she drinks, and she can’t pinpoint why. Surely, Judy’s not going to choke and die while drinking water.

“Well, I still dance,” Jen says, and Judy looks at her for far too long for the fact that she’s driving, and then she raises her eyebrows suggestively. 

“Only sometimes,” Jen says, skin gone red, “I aged out of my studio, and there was just a whole fucking lot going on at the time, and then I ended up going to college for dance therapy.”

“Dance therapy?” Judy asks, “Ooh, tell me more...is it like, therapy… but you dance during the session?”

“Not quite, Judy,” Jen says, and she bites her tongue to stop herself from continuing, but Judy‘s presence just strings the words right out of her. “It’s like, you’re supposed to allow yourself to move freely and connect with how you feel in your movement… you’re supposed to be able to help yourself heal with dance,” she pauses, fixes her gaze on a spot on the dash, the white dot between the dial for warm and cool air, “I guess I could never really do it right.”

“Is there a right way to do it? I bet your way is just as good.” 

Jen thinks for a moment; thinks about lying and putting on an act and saying how much she loves her dance therapy degree, how she learned so much about the body and mind and how both have the ability to heal through movement and evoking emotions and yada yada yada. Why lie, she thinks, when Judy’s only motive seems the route of validation. 

“Honestly, I don’t think there is but the professors just have a stick up their asses,” Jen says, and she sees Judy frown lightly, the slightest downturn of her lips, and maybe she should’ve lied, feigned joyousness for Judy’s sake. 

“Well, I mean, still, it’s cool,” Judy says, glances over with a smile, “you’ve got a degree, you’re moving to California. You’re a cool girl from Brooklyn. You’ll be fought over in LA, I think.” 

Jen smirks. Then, shifts in her seat, extending her legs as far as she can. She says, “Well. No degree, actually.”

“No?”

Maybe Judy will think it’s cool that she flunked out. She seems like she might. Or, maybe Judy just says what she thinks people want to hear. 

“I was close but, no.”

“Did you drop out?” Judy asks, then, immediately, “Sorry. That was rude. None of my business.” 

She shouldn’t say it. She bites her tongue. “I failed out.” 

“Oh.”

Jen’s quiet for a moment, matching Judy’s silence. Then, she says, “Too many fucking classes on anatomy. Like, I need to know the exact muscles in the leg to tell someone to deepen their plié for maximum fuckin’ stretch?” 

“You know, I don’t know even what plié means but I bet you’re right,” Judy says, continuing in a sort of ramble, “and hey, please don’t feel bad, or anything. I have never even taken a college class in my life, so. I mean, when I was a kid, I’d wanted to be a nurse and I’m nothing close to that.” And it’s like it reels Jen in, and Jen’s now got tunnel vision. 

“A nurse?” Jen says. 

“Yeah, I thought it would be fun,” Judy says, and takes a quick glance at Jen; her smile, crooked, “the whole helping people thing.”

“What changed your mind?”

Judy shrugs. “I don’t like blood.”

Jen nods. “Good choice, then.”

“Also,” Judy says, perking up, “I read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" in high school and Nurse Ratched scared the shit out of me.” 

Jen smirks; Judy’s smiling and it, too, might be like sunshine, a refuge. 

They pass what Jen thinks is wetlands, and here, the sky is long and flat and the clouds are fluffy and grey. 

“So, how’re you liking this so far?” 

Jen continues looking out the window. What Jen thinks is an egret is flying in the distance. It’s getting warm in the car; she rolls her sleeves up and says, “It’s nice.” 

“I’ve been going on road trips since I was a kid,” Judy says, “and I always loved them, so I hope you will, too. I’m not like, talking too much or anything am I?” 

“As long as you don’t start talking about Sugar Ray, you’re good.” 

“Oh hey, they’re not so bad.” Jen looks at her, head litled like, uh what?

“Judy,” Jen says incredulously. “They’re just so douchey.”

“They’ve got at least one good song.” 

“Which one?”

Judy seems to think for a moment, before, “Okay, maybe they are douchey. You’re right.” 

“Of course I am,” Jen says, “stick around and you’ll see I’m always right.”

Judy laughs. “Well, if it’s alright with you, I think I wanna take a few back roads.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s cool.” 

“Can you lead me by the hand?”

“What?”

“You’re the map girl, Jen.”

“Oh, right,” Jen picks the map up from the car floor, unfolds it. “Well, where are we?”

“I think I saw a sign that said, Weiss Farm Airport a few minutes ago.” 

Jen studies the lines, the twists, and the turns in red, and it looks like the next exit is that of “Shades of Death Road” so she lets Judy know of such information. 

“So, how many road trips have you gone on exactly?” One thing she’s noticed about Judy is that she doesn’t organically offer information, it’s always after the fact, so Jen wants to give her a reason to share. 

“Oh, hmm,” Judy says, and she sinks her teeth into her bottom lip, and Jen stares until she registers she is, embarrassingly engrossed by the little bit of skin that is chapped and touching Judy’s teeth. Jen very lightly shakes her head at herself and turns away as Judy says, “Rough estimate...would be 15?” 

“Damn.” 

Judy chuckles. “Yeah.” 

Maybe Jen can shake it out of her. “Just around the US?” 

“Vancouver once, but mostly from California to South Carolina.” 

“Every time?” 

“My mom had family there.” 

“She from there?” 

Judy nods, and she looks tense, her shoulders rise as she says, “It was just always cheaper to drive than to fly, and we didn’t have a lot of money when I was a kid, so we took a lot of road trips.” 

“Money was tight for me, too.” 

Judy looks at her with a small smile of acknowledgment, and it’s enough. 

Taking the back way doesn’t go smoothly—the roads aren’t connected, and they aren’t necessary adjacent to the highway. Some flow through open land, others are one-way streets enclosed by the side of a mossy green hill; a few paths take them over gorges, and creeks and Jen thinks they spend an hour or so hopping from various road to road. 

On some bodies of water, it’s frozen over, opaque glazes of sheeted ice. On others, the ice is broken up, floating like clouds angels live in. Jen’s never seen this many barren trees in her life; they allow for a peek into small towns along the highway, access into a window left open, a small slice of someone’s life, a blur of a picture, a portrait, an oil painting. Glimpses into other worlds that allow for a slight escape, a daydream if only for a snap second. Dolly Parton sings lines like I lived my life and I’m only 18 and “this dumb blond ain't nobody's fool,” and Judy sings along in a little faux twangy country accent, drawing out the ‘o’ with her mouth puckered, lips parted, lathered, and glossy. 

*

All Jen knows about Pennsylvania is that there’s The Amish and that she could never spell the state in Elementary school. They enter Pennsylvania over a short, underwhelming bridge called The Delaware Water Gap Bridge and it costs one dollar to cross. The guy at the toll booth looks miserable, and she can’t blame him; he lives in Pennsylvania, after all. 

Patsy Cline croons about cryin’ on his pillow as they come up on what looks to be a little green and white shack, it barely sticks out as they curve around the bend of the road. It has a huge soft-serve ice cream cone for signage, and Jen could use a second to stretch, so she tells Judy to pull over. 

“Oh, it’s so cute,” Judy says, peering out the windshield as they hit gravel. 

It’s an off the beaten path sort of thing, cocooned by evergreen trees. Once the car is parked, Judy exits like it’s on fire. As Jen is zipping her coat, Judy pops back in the car saying, “Oh, it’s so cold,” and Jen begins to wonder if that’s all Californians know how to say. 

Judy grabs her coat from the car and puts a pair of pink ear muffs on. As they walk over (the few people in line waiting to order don’t look Amish, and Jen kinda wants to see an Amish person in the flesh), Judy’s clearly taken by the charm of the joint. In forest green paint it says Mary Anne’s Dairy Bar against white; every dairy bar Jen’s ever known has been closed until further into spring. If only for a second, Jen thinks the place must be open specifically for Judy to enjoy.

Jen twists her torso, extends her arms up, and cranes her body until her muscles tense. She looks at the menu posted on the side window; no ice cream just yet, three weeks too early. They serve every kind of meat, and Jen wonders what Judy’s going to be able to eat. Jen turns to ask, and there the girl is, standing centimeters beside her. She’s not sure why Judy stands so close, and she doesn’t like that they’re giving people the opportunity to harbor the wrong idea about them. 

“Are you bendy?” 

“Like, flexible?”

Judy nods; eager, for some reason. 

“Yeah.” Jen goes back to staring at the weirdly extensive menu, but Judy quickly butts in again. 

“Can you do the splits?” 

Jen laughs at Judy’s glow of excitement. “Left, right, and middle.” 

Judy raises her eyebrows. “Oooh.” 

They look at the menu together for a moment, but Judy is still on the topic. “I can do a cartwheel.” 

“Most people can, I think,” Jen says, and settles on a burger, no cheese. 

Judy says, “Can I give you a hug?” and it's out of nowhere. Jen’s stomach flips. 

Jen looks at her. Judy’s nose is turning red, and her eyes look a little watery. “Why?” 

“For warmth, of course.”

“No, Judy, c’mon,” and maybe Jen should just hug her because really, Judy’s not used to the constant cold, her body not adjusted to wind chills and still-snowy March firsts. 

“But I’m so cold,” Judy fucking _pouts_ , and Jen rolls her eyes. Jen shrugs, eyeing the _Malts_ section. Hugging isn’t _that_ weird. “Side hug, but that’s all.”

Judy smiles, and immediately wraps her arm around Jen’s shoulder as she rises onto the balls of her feet. Jen’s arm finds Judy’s waist, and she barely touches her, hovering her hand around her coat. As they look at the menu, Judy presses their cheeks together, the growing numbness soothed by the rushing heat of Judy’s rosy patchy skin, and Jen stares at the Times New Roman font that lists _Fries, Curly, Crinkle._

(When Judy separates from her, Judy leaves a never before felt ache centering on the right side of Jen’s face.)

Judy orders veggie pierogies, Jen has a burger, and they eat in the middle seat of the car, blankets over their laps. Judy questions the change in temperature from New York to Pennsylvania, but all Jen can think about is why it feels like her cheek was struck with the bottom of a still too hot frying pan. The burger is dry and crumbly, and as Judy’s knee knocks into Jen’s, it’s as if the action shifts something off-kilter, and Jen doesn’t like it. The second Jen finishes her food, she exits the car for a smoke. 

Within no time, barely before Jen can walk a few feet into the wooded area behind the place, Judy’s there, too, beside her again, asking her if she likes Loretta Lynn. She makes what Jen thinks is a joke, something about “are you a Louisianna Woman, or Missippi Man,” and luckily the first drag of the cigarette helps quell any pending annoyance. 

They take a peek through the trees, the clearing in the distance something like a hospital waiting room painting; the muted sound of cars that pass, the strong rustling of dead leaves, the quiet liveliness of nature, and the tobacco of cigarettes a damn near calmative. 

Jen closes her eyes, warm smoke circling her mouth; Judy asks if she can have a cigarette, and when Jen opens her eyes, she spots a fox in the near distance, to the right of Judy’s head.

“Oh, shit,” leaves in a whisper, she’s not certain she’s ever seen a wild animal before, and sitting so seemingly peaceful. 

Judy turns quickly, saying, “what?” and then, “oh, hello!” as if the fox will greet her back. 

There’s something mesmerizing about seeing this reddish fox off between the stalks of trees, sitting in snow almost like in waiting. They both stare at the fox, and then Jen looks over to Judy, who seems to be having a moment with the animal, the corners of her mouth set in a small smile. 

Jen tries to think of something cunning to say, something Judy might like. “Do you know what foxes represent?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Judy says, stare fixed, “but they’re pretty.”

“They are,” Jen says, stare fixed— _she_ knows what a fox showing up means, read about it in a copy of Astrology Now at the library just last week. And then Judy begins walking, and even though Jen’s known this girl for 16 days, she wouldn’t put it past her to try and play fetch with a fox. She reaches out and the first thing in her grasp is Judy’s hair, which she ends up tugging at, yanking her back. 

“The fuck, Judy?” Jen says as Judy yelps, and the sudden harsh noise signals the fox’s departure. 

“I just wanted a better look,” Judy steps back, her palm rubbing her scalp, “oh, that hurt.”

“Sorry,” Jen’s going to continue with some variance of an apology, but quickly Judy’s saying, “if you wanna pull my hair, just ask,” and laughs like Jen’s wide eyes are the funniest thing she’s ever seen as she rubs her head, her hair getting messier and messier. 

There’s this lack of control Jen has when around Judy, like Judy’s aura chips away at Jen’s resolve; Jen needs to gain the upper hand somehow. 

“Judy, I wanna drive.” 

“You can drive?” Judy winces and her palm is still on her scalp.

Jen scoffs. “Yes, I can drive.” 

“I just thought--”

“Wait, you were gonna go on a road trip across the country with someone you thought couldn’t even drive?”

Judy shrugs. “Well, you’re my guest.”

“O-kay, but... I’m not,” Jen says, guilty by Judy’s still-pained face; she wants to replace Judy’s hand. “I can drive for a few hours.” 

When Judy gives her the keys, they stand at the driver’s side door, and Judy pouts only slightly as she hands them over. Jen thinks the pout might even be subconsciously done, and her looks give her an edge. Jen’s known Judy’s pretty since the moment she saw her, from an objective standpoint Judy simply _is_ attractive. It’s sort of like the way you eye an actress in a movie because she’s gorgeous and ropes your attention in with every sway of her hips. Jen stares as Judy walks around to the passenger side because Judy’s pout is like Jewel’s in the “Who Will Save Your Soul” music video, which Jen’s always found captivating. 

Being behind the steering wheel is foreign but she’s glad to focus on something objective like driving, and when they start up again Judy sits there humming to Joan Baez, a song that goes on and on and only sounds like a reoccurring harp dream. The center console creates a barrier Jen hadn’t minded before, but now it feels too far, too disjointed from Judy. She misses the heat, and she misses standing centimeters apart and she hates that she knows she misses that. 

*

Pennsylvania is tall trees and wide tunnels with one lane backroads where Judy sings to every song that plays and snacks on sour peaches. 

“Well, the guy at the market was right,” Judy says, lips set in a frown. “It’s not peach season.” 

"Not ripe?” Jen says, and with an open road in front of her, she takes a prolonged look over at her passenger, who sticks her tongue out like a cat sipping water, face in disgust. Jen laughs. It’s weird when she remembers that Judy’s her friend, that she’s known her for only a handful of mismatched days. Judy says the peaches taste like candles, and then: 

“Are you okay driving so far? We can switch off the second you’re tired.” 

Jen glances at Judy; Jen’s been the driver for barely two hours and Judy’s asked if she’s okay a dozen times. Jen’s unsure if Judy’s this conscientious or if she’s this overbearing. 

“Peachy,” Jen says. 

“Oh, is someone a comedian?” 

“I joke from time to time, yep.” 

“Ah,” Judy leans an elbow on the center console, the seatbelt makes a straining noise as Judy leans closer to Jen, “Tell me, Jen. Peachy keen or just peachy?” 

Jen bites the inside of her cheek. Peachy keen, but Judy doesn’t need to know that. “Just peachy.” 

“How can I make it better?” Judy’s voice, Jen swears, drops an octave. Jen looks at Judy, her body twisted, and facing her; Jen thought there would be a pout aimed at her, but Judy’s got a small smirk. The road is bare; she wishes they were on the crowded highway, and there was no choice but to eye the yellow lines. 

“Stop asking me if I’m okay driving,” Jen says, pointedly, eyebrows raised. “I am.” 

“Noted.” Judy slumps back in her seat and begins picking at the loose thread on the console. Jen looks ahead. 

There’s something like frazzled restlessness in Judy, the opposite of Jen’s own. Jen hadn't realized that Judy is so eager to please, asking before doing. She seems to be looking for reassurance as if she will backfire if it isn’t given. Jen’s known girls like Judy, all of them good Catholic girls who harbor guilt for existence, who try to make their sins up by never asserting their desires. Girls are like this, Jen thinks, made to see themselves as givers and never takers, but Jen sense there’s something other than the weight of womanhood ailing Judy. 

Judy turns the music up, and only hums. She bobs her head to the beat, often off tempo, until “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” comes on, and she expertly sings both Elton John and Kiki Dee’s parts. Judy has a sweet voice, and it’s nice to listen to her; she has this earnestness about her Jen can’t openly display in herself. Jen watches as Judy shout-signs, “So don't go breaking my heart, I won't go breaking your heart,” and Jen finds herself, adding in, softly talk-singing, “And nobody told us, ‘cause nobody showed us,” along with Judy, whose smile Jen can feel. She speaks a little louder, “and now it's up to us, babe, I think we can make it,” and they fall in sync and Jen only grows louder, and there’s a confidence there, with how excited Judy is to sing with her. There’s something about Judy where Jen’s reservation doesn’t live. 

Suddenly, when the song ends, it’s, “Um, Jen?” 

“Yeah?” Jen says, noticing Judy shifting in her seat. Judy’s mouth is set in a line, and she looks pained. Jen turns the music down. “What’s the matter?” 

“Oh, nothing’s wrong,” and Jen’s never been so quick to worry with any other friend, something she’s only nearly mortified by, wondering why Judy’s so fucking special, “I just...I really have to go to the bathroom. Like, right now.” 

“Okay, uh,” Jen says, and Judy’s nose scrunches, and Jen wants to slap herself because all she thinks is how cute Judy looks, like a baby or something, which is definitely not on topic, “I’m pretty sure I saw a sign that said next rest stop 25 miles.” 

“I know, I know,” Judy says, her leg bouncing furiously, “that’s why I said something.” 

“Well, uh, we passed a few places before then, Judy.” 

“I know, I just didn’t want to stop the song. We were having fun, weren't we?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"And then we passed the “Restop in 25 Miles” sign and well, I figured I could hold it,” Judy says, ****and she looks at Jen, “spoiler alert, I cannot. So, if you don’t mind, you can just pull over anywhere, it’s fine.”

“Judy, I think we are quite literally in the middle of nowhere,” Jen says, and Judy only nods, and gives her a shrug, a frown, adding to the variation of Judy Pouts, “what, you’re gonna piss on the side of the road?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Judy says, “I can go anywhere. It’s like my special talent.” 

Jen sighs. “That is a little gross, but okay. Do you want to pee amongst the evergreen, or do you prefer a good bush?” 

“I _love_ a good bush.” 

Jen squints at Judy, who now looks proud, and Jen’s not sure why. “Do you have to go that bad? We can try to find like, a clearing?” 

“Well, I never would’ve thought you were an exhibitionist,” Judy says, and then nervously adds, “I don’t know if I wanna go in a field. What if there’s burr weed? 

The hell is burr weed, Jen thinks, then says, “So, trees it is?” 

Judy nods. The second it’s plausible and when there’s a small section of dirt sanctioned as a pull-off point, Jen veers the car over to the left.

Judy looks passed her, to what Jen assumes is the trees. Then, looks right at her, bottom lip between teeth, and she pleads, “Will you come with me?” 

Jen leans her head against the rest. “That’s a little weird, no?” 

“I don’t wanna go alone.” Jen shouldn’t be surprised, but her stomach produces a little zing when the pout appears. 

“What if I sit here, and like, I don’t know, play the music full volume? Then, you know, it’s like, you’re not alone.” 

Judy seems to consider this for a moment. “Okay. Thank you.” Jen watches Judy button her coat and tells her good luck as she exits. Jen opens her door, and as Judy walks around the car, Jen zips her coat and turns the volume all the way up, right in the middle of a distinctly Joni Mitchell song and Judy looks back, smiling softly with a little wave as she walks further into towering trees. 

Jen watches until the green swallows Judy, and there is a slight worry, now, that Judy has disappeared into what is practically wilderness, and Jen thinks she’s always been level headed but does indulge in paranoia, depending, and she’s not sure she trusts Judy alone. She might see a baby bear and think to pet it and then, well, what if the mom is nearby? That mom is going to rip Judy apart. Judy might see a berry bush, and pick a few and eat the bad ones. Or, mushrooms. Judy would see wild mushrooms and go for it; either ending in death or a psychedelic trip or a mix of both. Judy on shrooms, Jen thinks, and she laughs to herself. 

Joni Mitchell says into the enclosure of pine-scented air and black concrete road, _I'm so hard to handle, I'm selfish and I'm sad, now I've gone and lost the best baby, that I ever had._ Jen watches the spot Judy walked through, bites down on her tongue so hard she wonders if she’ll bite through and bleed, mixing acrid taste with acrid words that’ll sit on her tongue like the putrid taste of truth. Maybe she should’ve gone with her. 

Then, there’s rustling and Judy’s there, and the feeling is light and what mimics relief and Jen exhales long and in a near shudder. She watches Judy until she gets into the car. 

“Now I’m worried I touched poisonous sumac,” Judy says. 

“Oh,” Jen says, and Judy settle in. She takes her coat off, slouching down in the seat; Judy has a glisten of sweat coating the dip of her neck, and Jen feels her mouth water. She swallows. “I don’t know what sumac is.”

Judy waves it off. “Thanks for stopping. And waiting.” 

“What, you think I’d leave you mid piss in the woods?” 

“Hey, you never know! Maybe your plan all along has been to steal my Subaru.” 

Jen smiles as Judy laughs lightly; Jen starts the car, and as she begins driving again, she’s curious if Judy is well-liked. She’s got this easy-going, go with the flow attitude that people love. That people take advantage of. She wonders if back in California Judy has a million friends who adore her and as soon as Jen’s there, too, she won’t mean much. Here and now, she thinks Judy likes her. In California, she more than likely can’t hold a candle to the open, free, eccentric Los Angeles crowd. 

Knowing Judy in a place of limbo almost angers her. She pictures what the last few months could’ve been if they met on the subway one crowded morning, standing chest to chest and grasping the same bar, breathing the same stuffy circulated air. Or, maybe, they run into one another on the street and solidify a friendship because Judy spills a drink on her, something easy like that, straight out of a movie. They could’ve had months instead of weeks. They could’ve gone skating over the holidays, Judy holding onto her as the ice–inexperienced Californian she is. They could have spent a night unveiling the Christmas tree downtown, and gone for some sort of nightcap, apple cider sans alcohol. Valentine’s Day could’ve been spent in Jen’s room drinking cheap Madeira wine and eating discounted chocolate, not alone, and holding onto one another on the subway, a crafted excuse to lean into the other’s touch. 

It’s as if the openness of the road demands honesty, casts a veil, another string of moments that belong to them in this cosmic, binding way in this cacophony of time. There’s something about Judy that makes Jen believe in the pull of the universe. 

When Jen sees “Freeway One Mile,” she picks up speed, merges onto the highway as soon as she can, and she tries to ignore Judy as she talks about how Toronto is said to be the New York City of Canada, and how she thinks they should do something like go to an underground party, and drop Canadian acid. Jen feels lame by her first thought: only if you don’t leave my side. 

(Jen had made herself stoic, unsure of how long she’s designated driver, she let her inner voice run rampant. It’s a necessary distraction.)

Jen doesn’t realize they passed state lines and are now back in New York until there’s a road sign, something about Binghamton, NY is a mile away; New York state is trees, and trees, and for some reason confederate flags. They pass a house on the side of the road, yellow and two-story and half-burnt down, standing tall like a statue of an American hero who one can’t figure the importance of. They pass the house and it’s gone in a second, but she thinks of the planks sticking out of the decimated section, the symmetrical half untouched, perfect like the beach right before a storm rest painted in canary yellow with a bright blue door for a long while. 

They reach a section of open land and watch a dipping sunset from behind the windshield, the gleam of goldish orange in a growing fog of sky, an effect that mingles the two, Judy, the sun ever glowing, and Jen, the fog rolling in. 

*

The Lollipop Motel is everything Jen hates on principle. It’s bright yellows and pastel pinks, tacky in the way souvenirs of densely populated piers are. It’s a motel from the 50s, Jen thinks, questionable in the way that it uses these ethnically ambiguous animated kids as their signage, as odd as The Dairy Queen logo had been. 

East Aurora, New York is outside of Buffalo, not far from the border into Ontario, Canada, but they agree on stopping in this town along the highway for the night because it reaches 8pm, and the flashing sign that says VACANCY is good enough, the fear being that they will sleep in their car on the side of the road urging for immediacy. 

When they park, Judy says something about how the name of the hotel reminds her of the _Wizard of Oz._ She sings a little song, pitches her voice high, “we welcome you, we welcome you,” dancing in her seat. Jen’s pleased when Judy annoys her because it shows that maybe Judy hasn’t gotten full hold of her after all. 

Dinner is convenience store food; nachos with clearly plastic cheese for Jen and a salad with soggy tomatoes for Judy. They share a cherry Slurpee Judy buys, and Jen wonders why Judy’s so keen on communizing. 

They rent a room for the night, and it isn’t until after their interaction with the guy at the front desk that Jen wonders if there is anything questionable about two girls sharing a room, or if her paranoia is convincing her there’s space for deviance. The guy at the front desk gives them a wink as they exit the office, and Jen thinks Judy misses it, she continues unphased. Their room is tiny with two twin beds dressed with scratchy-looking sheets, a bathroom that’s got white mold on brown wood. There’s a TV so old it doesn’t have a remote, a small refrigerator that sounds like a roller coaster going up, and three bibles. 

Jen runs her finger across “Holy Bible” on the desk as Judy says, “Not too shabby.” Jen turns to the girl, on the opposite side of the room, in front of the bed she’s designated as her’s, making Jen’s bed the closest to the front door, and Jen says, “You just love the paisley-patterned duvet, don’t you?” 

Before either settle, Judy says she’s going to use the bathroom, so Jen goes outside to smoke. She thinks they might actually be the only ones in this motel. Their room is the only one with a blue, electronic glow in the window. There’s a picnic bench in the middle of the quad-like parking lot that Jen stalks over to, wrapped in a coat and scooting on broken patches of black ice. 

The light outside of the block of rooms is dim; the bright fluorescence of the sign in front of the motel office lights the space. Piles of dirty snow slump against the building, the wind hits Jen’s face so hard it burns. She lifts the hood of her coat and lights the cigarette. When she inhales, the bitter taste of smoke is there like an ice pick rolling on hot skin, the disgust of it something like vodka proof on your tongue or speaking genuine, unfiltered. She counts the seconds between the passing of each car along the quiet two-lane road. It’s an eternity in long breathes of counts. 

It’s as if she’s looking down on herself, not fully immersed in the moment. Almost like she’s watching a film reel; none of this is happening to her, but someone else. She feels what’s happening as she feels for a character in a movie. There’s a comfortable level of detachment, and then she hears boots on gravel, and she turns, and Judy stops in her tracks. Jen nods her head in a come here motion, and says, “Aren’t you cold?” because Judy’s now only got a henley on. 

“I just wanted to see where you were.” 

“I’m just...” Jen raises her hand, flicks the cigarette as her reply. 

“Oh,” Judy says, she nods and sits next to Jen atop the bench table. Her shoe lines up with Jen’s, touching, barely. “Can I…?” 

“Sure, yeah.” Jen goes to get her a cigarette out of her pocket. Judy’s eyes are black as the night on the roof only a few days ago, and Jen thinks things are moving way too fast. She transfers the cigarette and lighter to Judy, fingers brush, and Judy shivers. 

“Sorry if I’m bothering you,” Judy says, then lights it and inhales, the smoke exiting her mouth slowly. She coughs and then, “I got out of the bathroom and you weren’t there. I thought you made your great escape.” 

It’s a joke, but it's a joke made twice within a day. What we feel, we subconsciously convey type of thing. 

“Judy, I’m not gonna leave you in the middle of nowhere,” Jen says, “I promise.” 

Judy laughs, keeping with the joke. “I know. My jokes just fall flat.” 

The eerie quiet starts to freak Jen out, both now from Judy and the motel. She’s not used to dead air. 

“Have you ever made love?” 

Maybe she jinxed it.

“Christ, you would say it like that, wouldn’t you?” Her heartbeat is suddenly rapid, her face hot like she’s opened an oven and stared inside. Jen rips the bandaid off. “Yes, Judy, as a matter of fact, I’ve fucked before.” 

Judy knocks her shoulder into Jen’s arm. “No, Jen, I mean, like...not just fucked but like, had that deep, earth-shattering connection during sex?”

“Sex is sex. You just fake it till it's over.” 

“You fake it?” 

“You don’t?” 

“You shouldn’t have to,” Judy says, indignant as she’s flicking the cigarette; her mouth is in a frowny pout. “It should be good for all involved.” 

“That’s unrealistic.” 

“No, it’s not.” 

“Yes, it is.” 

“Jen,” Judy fucking _whines_ , and her legs bounce, and her teeth chatter. “When was the last time you had sex? Good sex?” 

“Judy, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say this really is none of your business.”

“Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry.” 

Jen nods and she thinks about chain-smoking, staying out here when Judy leaves, searching for a reprieve. Judy plants her hand in between their bodies, on bare wood, and her elbow pokes Jen’s arm. Judy apologizes and Jen finds that she wants to continue talking. She closes her eyes and inhales smoke before she says: 

“Last time I was at a drive-in. That’s when.” 

Judy looks pleased, and Jen likes that. 

“And? Was it good?” 

Jen inhales and she holds the smoke in her mouth until she has a coughing fit. When Judy (unnecessarily) reaches out, pats Jen’s back with one hand, and holds onto her upper arm with the other, Jen says, “Judy, personally, sex is...whatever. I’ve never been with a dude who spent any time on me, okay? I mean, really, have you had sex that good?” 

Judy detaches from her, and says, almost robotic like an advert, “Do you masturbate?” 

“Oh, my God?” Jen tosses the cigarette in front of her. “We’re _outside_ , Judy.” 

Judy puts her hands up in defense. “I’m just saying, if you’re not getting it from a guy, you gotta get it somewhere.” She smirks and takes a puff. 

Jen doesn’t answer. “I have a feeling I’m not even good at sex. I got broken up with right _after_ and the movie wasn’t even finished.” 

“What movie?” Judy stubbs the cigarette on the table. 

“What?” 

“What movie did you see?” 

Jen rolls her eyes. Thanks, Judy, she thinks. “ _Gilda_.” 

“You had sex to _Gilda_?” 

“Oh, so sorry, do you prefer _Double Indemnity_?” Jen says, and when Judy shivers, Jen shakes her head. She can’t help herself as she reaches out and wraps her arm around Judy’s shoulders, and pulls her into her side. She sees Judy’s smile, and she tries to make this as friendly and non-intimate as possible. She leans her head away. 

“Now drive-ins are ruined for me, I think.” 

“I’m sorry,” Judy says, her hand coming to palm Jen’s knee, “he’s an asshole for breaking up with you like that. You’re like, heaven on a stick.” 

Jen chuckles, and she tells herself to calm down. They’re friends, and intimacy, of any sort, between two girls, really, it means nothing. 

“But maybe I can make it up to you?” Judy says, squeezing Jen’s knee, “we could try to find a drive-in and maybe they don’t have to be tainted for you anymore.” 

Jen scoffs, feels bad because Judy is just trying to be nice, and then says, “Yeah. Maybe.” She looks at Judy again; mortified by her immediate thought. Judy is probably a very good kisser. 

She hopes Judy doesn’t sense it, can’t read minds or anything like that, but then Judy leans away and fuck what if telepathy is real? Jen drops her hand, but it stays planted on the table, behind Judy. 

Judy says, “I got broken up with kinda recently.” 

“Damn, look at us.” 

“Yeah. Last fall.” 

“Was it right as he pulled out?” Jen bluntly says, smirking at Judy’s bug-eyed look, “cause, I mean, literally we had sex and then he broke up with me. I think it was because I didn’t wanna go to his family’s fourth of July barbecue. People who celebrate the fourth of July kinda weird me out, anyway. Like, okay, how does eating hot dogs equate to freedom? Aren't hot dogs German anyway?” 

“That’s so shitty,” Judy says, “I got broken up with because I was “open enough.” But she never even asked me about myself. So why would I share, you know? Plus, talking about deep personal shit is no fun.” 

“Wait, she?” Jen retroactively realizes her disdain and tries to soothe it over when she registers the thread of fear in Judy’s eyes. “She,” Jen repeats, forcefully calm, she nods like she’s in deep thought about political reform or something she knows equally nothing about. She leans away, realizes how that looks, but knows she can’t move in again. 

“It’s fine,” Jen says, staring at the cigarette she tossed, “I like gay people. My best friend from college. He’s gay.” 

“Oh,” Judy says, straight-laced and nodding. “Cool. I think the guy at the front desk is gay.” 

“No way,” Jen says, tilts her head in thought at Judy. “You think?” 

“I get a vibe,” Judy says, “also, he had a pink triangle pin on his shirt.” 

Jen nods, embarrassed because she doesn’t know what that means, embarrassed because Judy seems to think she would. 

And then Judy switches like that. “Do you ever look up at the moon and cry?” 

Jen considers the question. “No?” 

“It’s just so beautiful.” 

“Oh,” Jen says, hushed, taken by the earnest swell of Judy's voice. “Well. Yeah. It is.” 

“And we all look at it,” Judy says, “We all see the same moon. We always have.” 

Jen looks to the sky, really looks. The clouds mimic smoke, translucent grey in the deep navy of night. They drift in the wind, the moon a flashlight through them, blinking as they float by. As Judy sits next to her, head tipped above, the white glow of the moon seems to push right through Jen’s chest, unstitching her, reaching in, and finding hidden benevolence. 

“What do you know about the moon?” 

Judy smiles shyly, and then she inhales like she’s preparing a speech, one she’s finally been given the green light to begin, and says, “Well, first, what do you know?” 

“Well, like Pink Floyd says, I know there’s a dark side.” 

“Oh, did Pink Floyd teach you that?” 

As Jen listens to Judy talk about the moon’s craters and caverns and lava tubes, she and Judy glow in the night, lit by something kindling within them. She looks up at the moon, clear now, unfiltered by haze. She’s looked at the same moon as Judy for 20 years. She never saw the moon for what it is; an anchor, a grounding force, something soul-deep if you’ll let it be. The blue hues of dusk illuminate Judy, the patchy ground of green and white and brown all muted; the glow of a TV now in a few more windows becomes the glow of a TV that lays across their room as she waits for Judy to be done showering. 

_The Facts of Life_ is on, the TV silent, and Jen thinks about how she and Judy are going to be sleeping in the same room, and this feels something monumental, like the first sleepover of a new friendship solidified. 

Jen lies on top of the bed, leaning against the headboard. She stares at the TV screen, zoning out, and then Judy walks by in a robe. A short one. High on her thigh, and blue with white flowers. And a tie that binds the material. It seems like Judy saunters in front of her, the bottom of the garment flowing in the wind created. She flashes back to pulling Judy’s hair, her response, and wonders if any of this means anything at all. 

Jen tries not to watch her. Judy pulls out a light green blanket from her belongings and lays it on her bed, and Jen can see “Judy Ann” embroidered, and when Jen realizes it’s a baby blanket, it gives her the confidence to reach over to her bag on the floor and pull out her stuffed animal she’s had since childhood, though she stuffs in under the blanket immediately. 

It’s quiet, a hushed lull coming from the TV after Judy asks if she can turn the volume up. 

Jen goes to the bathroom, changes into her pajamas, brushes her teeth , and washes her face all while avoiding eye contact with the mirror. There’s something like shame, bubbling. 

When Jen walks back in the room, Judy’s lying in bed, curled on her side, face poking out. Judy smiles and says, “You look cozy.” 

“Oh,” Jen looks down at herself, then sits on the side of her bed, facing Judy. “Yeah.” 

“Vaseline, huh?” 

Jen chuckles. “No comment on my Christmas flannel pants?” she says, climbing into bed. 

“I’m still stuck on the Vaseline t-shirt, I think.” 

“I just have this shirt.” 

“You just have a shirt that says Vaseline?” 

Jen makes a face at her. “You’re wearing a robe to bed.” 

Judy rolls onto her back, “Yes, and I think I look cute while doing it,” and the blanket is drooping, exposing Judy’s half-covered chest, her boobs like, very much about to fall out. Jen thinks of Judy and her tattoo, her stomach muscles tensing, and the noises that left her mouth. Jen looks to the ceiling. Does Judy have anything substantial under that robe? 

And then, suddenly, when settled, it’s, “You know, Jen, sex isn’t like, a universal skill we all have to learn. I think it’s different with everyone, and you might have good sex with someone and bad sex with another but I doubt you’re just bad at sex,” Judy says this without looking at Jen, and Jen eyes the popcorn ceiling. “I bet you’re good, and I bet he was shit.” 

“Well, thanks.” Judy smiles, and Jen decides she’s going to ask before momentum dies. 

“Do you,” she begins, “like, actually....do the–well, the thing you mentioned earlier?” she tilts her head side to side trying to convey _something_ without explicitly saying, “Hey, still new friend Judy, do you, too, make yourself come?” 

“Once a day,” she says, in a tone that’s reminiscent of “as the doctor orders.” 

“Oh,” Jen says, eyes widening; then, she calms herself. She doesn’t want to make Judy feel bad or have Judy think she’s so sexually repressed she’s never once jerked off. She has, for the record, and many times. 

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna do it out in the open,” Judy says. She lies on her back, looking over at Jen, innocence in her eyes that lights something in Jen’s lower belly. 

“Oh, no, oh my God,” Jen’s panicked and now ill by the feel of scratchy wool sheets, “I–no, Judy, I didn’t mean that–I just...well, girls don’t really say they do that so casually so, I just–I was fucking surprised, okay?” 

“It’s fine, Jen,” Judy says so sweetly, “I get it,” like she knows Jen’s trying to say I do it too without getting dangerously explicit. 

“Okay, goodnight,” Jen says quickly, and she turns the TV off, making sure there’s no eye contact and is relieved when Judy follows, says “Night.”

And Jen lies there, shifting onto her side opposite Judy, and it hits her at once, an arrow finally meeting the fated target. 

(Retroactively, she knew last night, perhaps days before, that meeting Judy is something soul etched and eternal. She’d briefly wondered if Judy’s a heartbreaker, the type to take people under her wing, nurture, nourish, depart with no choice but to love her; she leaves you a leveled up version of yourself, and you’re better because of her, because she reaches inside your chest, carves out the weight placed there long ago, stitches you over, and you can breathe again.) 

She had thought this way about other girls before, had fallen into the tiger's den of I wonder what Zoe in math class lips felt like, wondered if they were soft and plush or chapped and rough, had sat and watched the girls in dance traipse across the floor and thought of their elegance as something sacred like royalty or a handshake between two girls who know the secret that bound the Milky Way's orbit. 

It’s not a shock that she would look at Judy, notice a feature of her’s and fixate, like a cat with a laser beam. It’s not an ache like a stake through her chest, though it certainly isn’t felt with ease, and she never tries to indulge when she’s struck by another girl, though with Judy, it might be something like a haystack waiting for a match. It’s never felt this urgent, this much like she can’t stop, and like she maybe doesn't want to tame herself. 

She can’t seem to have a single glance at Judy without her mind shouting how pretty the other girl is, how her nose is curved so distinctly and how she’d like run her finger down the length of it, and figure her feel of Judy’s lips through the pads of her fingers, make her laugh and then touch the lines of her mouth that remind her Judy’s full of life, continuous, ever-growing life. 

She never would’ve thought Judy would be gay; Judy doesn’t look like any of the gay women Jen’s ever known. And then she realizes, she doesn’t actually know any gay women. She’s seen them sometimes, maybe in one episode of a sitcom, or a background character of a movie. She knows gay men, and she loves her friend Christopher, but Jen’s not gay, and she’s certainly not involved in the community enough to have befriended gay girls. 

Judy’s dated women, been with women, thinks and fantasizes about other women, and Jen feels the reaction to this piece of implied information etched bone-deep, visceral like a burn. It’s something Jen has worried was within her, the passivity of the fear like a small cavity, only stinging when provoked. 

She rolls over and tries to make herself see Judy in the dark, tries to make out where her hair lies and where her nose is, or if her mouth is parted or delicately shut. As she strains to see the girl she’s drawn to, she wonders if this intensity is real, something like _that_ , something more than admiration. All at once, it's thrilling and it’s rejuvenating and yet so terrifying. She never thought she’d face it, she had always curbed it so well. 

Still, she’s not sure if she’s roped in by the novelty of it all of if the physical pull she’s experiencing is true.

“Judy,” Jen whispers, hushed in the quiet hum of night, the buzzing of the mini-fridge the more prominent score.

It takes a second, but Judy says, “Hm?”

It’s silly, but Jen says it. “Red foxes...they represent transformation.” 

“Oh, wow,” Judy says, visibly shifting in place. Her voice taking on a rasp, a husk, almost, she continues, “See, Jen? Everything _is_ delicately connected.” 

“Yeah.

Night, Judy.” 

“Night. Sleep tight, Jen.” 

Jen lies on her back, and she thinks about where she’ll be this time, next month. She wants Judy to be there, and _this_ can’t ruin that. Life shifts, it ebbs and it flows, like the moon controls the tide. Jen’s caught in a crossfire of the end and the beginning and Judy is unstitching her, untangling matted thread as if meticulously undressing a long untended wound, saying, I got you, all the while. It’s a fucking cascade and it’s going to suffocate her, and Jen knows she has to steel herself off.


	4. if you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly, just thank you for reading and i love you
> 
> the chapter title is a line in "don't hesitate" by mary oliver.
> 
> (also: tw for mention of drugs other than marijuana)

At 6:15 am, she forfeits. Sleep, so far, has been hours of fading in and out. It’s the kind where you lie flat on your back, trying to quell the thoughts that keep your mind heavy, weighed down by wrought possibilities. Every time she takes a look at the bedside clock the lime green gleams an hour or so later, though it’s as if no time has passed, and it doesn’t feel like she’s slept at all. 

She counts to three to give herself a moment of composure before slowly sitting up in bed, trying to make as little noise as possible. Judy’s a light sleeper, Jen’s learned, and will shift awake at the slightest of movements, a rickety creak in the box spring. The lines of light slipping in through the cracks of the doorframe tell her that the morning is a marble sky, strokes of grey with whipped clouds, and there’s even the smell of wet cement seeping in to prove it. 

It’s March 2nd, a little less than three weeks until spring. She wonders how different spring in California will be; will the season be met with the bloom of cherry blossoms? She imagines the deep pink dotting no longer bare branch trees that paint Central Park a lilac scented dream. She rubs at her eyes, knuckles pressing deep into the sockets until there’s that familiar burn, a soothing sort of pain. It’s not certain, but she has a feeling the first sight of spring is another piece of New York she’s leaving behind. 

When she looks around the room, only able to make out the vague shapes from muscle memory, it’s as if the passage of nightfall has brought her into this other world, one that is something like a held breath in the midst of a promise. One where she’s losing, gaining, and fumbling into disarray. She needs to find more out about Judy.   
  
Yesterday, the morning began with the warmth of a home she’s always known. The same coffee pot that sounds like a steam engine as it percolates, the same white mug that always gets too hot in the microwave. She’s never lived anywhere where the meadow of her mother’s warmth didn’t once touch, like the sun washing a field over in nourishment with its light. This morning, the cold burrows, on her skin and in her bones, and she’s nearly certain, now, that she’s made the wrong choice. 

At home, she has the impression of her mom sewn within her surroundings; there are remnants of her in cherished scenes, meals made with her passed through the decade's recipe books. In Brooklyn, she can walk down the streets and sense her mom’s presence, 19 years with her there, memories lacing themselves through garden gates. In California, there’s nothing of her, not a single touch. Jen can already feel her absence.

Judy is snoring. Large breaths that seem to bubble out of her. When Jen steps out of bed, she stands facing Judy, feeling awkward, and gangly in her pajamas. Her left pant leg raised to her calf, the stitches itching her skin. She steps closer to Judy, trying to see if she can make out her face in the dimness, but the girl shifts from her side and onto her back and it’s as if the action slaps Jen in the face, instructing her to step away, and not act like a stalker in the making. 

The floor squeaks as she walks, so she stalls as if she’s moving in slow motion, and she rounds the bed, grabbing her coat she tossed on the single chair in the room. She slides her boots on, fixing her pant legs, and she is somehow able to make her way out the door without waking Judy. She knows because, in the following minutes, Judy doesn’t trail behind her. 

The day is met with rain, the cement darkened, the roof dripping. Jen leans against the wall, just beside the motel room door. She wonders how long Judy is going to sleep. She shouldn’t wake Judy, so maybe she'll backtrack and try sleeping again. She lifts her hood over her head and then rummages in her pockets for a cigarette, and her lighter. 

The inhale is instantly calming, a sigh of smoke off into the air. It’s all a sort of a blur, really; it’s like she’s gazing into a semi-opaque surface, unable to make out her own reflection. It's almost as if she’s in one of those ghost stories. The scariest of them, where she’s slowly disappearing as time goes on—where soon no one will recognize her, care for her, or even remember her. 

Or maybe it’s not like that at all. 

Life, for so long, has felt on the brink of vanishing from sight. Most days it’s as if she’s snowballing down a mountain, as large and as intimidating as they come, and sometimes, if she’s lucky, a sense of absolution feels only a hands width away. She always loops millimeters before reaching flat ground, though, always dipping into maelstrom once again. It’s something like a dream she’s been placed in, minutes displayed above her, the crisp tick of a steadying metronome there to remind her she’s only running out of time.

 _Or_ maybe it’s not like that at all. 

Maybe she’s just delusional from lack of sleep. 

She flicks the cigarette, and she thinks of when she was a kid, her mom telling her that she’s so dramatic she’s going to have a heart attack before she reaches ten years old. That she’s so reactionary it’s going to fix her trouble. She remembers her mom, hovering steps above her as she sits flat on the sidewalk, telling her that jumping off the play structure, soaring through ten feet of air, and landing chest first into bark is what knocks the wind out of her. She remembers her mom trying to calm her between heaving gulps and cries, hand on her chest to help even her breathing. There’s that little bit of time between leaping and landing, the freeness of falling, where she wishes she could remain. 

For so long Jen has felt like she’s waiting for something, always something more. Her teenage years were met with _if we can just get through this, then life will start._ Then, it was _if we can just get along, then life will start._ It’s always _then life will start_ , and never an acceptance that life is happening no matter the circumstance. Life was happening with washed plums on the counter, the earth shifting silence after a fight, her mother wrapped in a robe before chemo. Life was happening with missing biology assignments, a half-assed performance at her dumb little minimum waged job, her father waiting up in the living room’s rocking chair at the end of a long day. Life is happening with the cigarette between her lips, the lull of dawn's-light, Judy asleep in their motel room. Life was never stalled. It just never feels like much of anything is happening, and then suddenly it’s all happened. 

Jen thinks of Judy. Judy who is fast asleep and flat on her back. How her silhouette moves ‘round in incandescence, ink-dark out. How Judy lays in bed and talks to her as if they’ve been friends for years, a closeness suddenly so blistering she’s bruised. It’s a level of ease Jen’s never known. How Judy discussed sex and getting herself off like it’s something we all do and aren’t ashamed of. Jen’s never talked like that with anyone. She wonders how many people Judy is this open with, if this is how Judy operates, laid bare and content with who she is to a degree that makes you want to be okay with yourself, too. 

Then, the door is opening, and Judy’s there, poking her head out, all sleepy eyes and messy hair, and Jen tunes in as if Judy is her favorite song. 

“Goodmorning,” Judy says, one eye open, the other squinting, and her sleepy voice, husky yet soft, ignites the rush from last night, the ache that so few have manifested, and that only Judy has begun to soothe—Jen is nothing but a baby bird that has wandered off, and it’s bound to end cruelly.

*

It doesn’t take long for them to decide to get going. 

Jen watches from the driver’s seat, a comfortable ten or so feet away, as Judy refills her cooler with ice, situated in an alcove by the motel’s office, a tall red soda machine towering above her. This morning, it’s like she can’t even look at Judy without her body going through an adrenaline rush, like she’s dived headfirst into an ice-cold wave. She eyes Judy, watching her as she walks back to the car, and it’s as if Judy is cast in a new light, a certain hazy glow ‘round the edges like an old photograph. There’s a confirmation wading at the surface, arrived by the light of last night’s moon. She can barely think it, the words slurring together in her head, the only coherent thought is something like forcing herself to believe that if she trusts the water, it will rush her to the shore. 

She wonders if she’s drawn to Judy because Judy doesn’t know much about her. It’s very reminiscent of a clean slate, her and Judy, and Jen has total control of the narrative here. Judy will only ever know what Jen chooses to tell her. She thinks anyone might be drawn to that.

Judy, overly sincere, steps into the car, and just by the way Judy reaches out and squeezes her arm, saying, “thanks for waiting,” Jen knows she’s right. That guarding herself, and not letting herself revel too much in the very newfangled attachment she has to this girl, is necessary. 

They agree on finding the nearest diner for breakfast, figuring it’s the cheapest but most fulfilling option. As Jen drives down the main road of the town, spanning only five or so actual blocks, Judy cups her hands around the vents on the dash, saying something about how she’s never going to get used to the cold. In only a few minutes, Jen’s parked in a random diner’s lot, and watching Judy slip hoop earrings through her earlobes, one with a large silver sparkle, the other with a crescent moon, like charms dangling. When Judy has the earrings in, she turns to Jen and smiles, like she’s proudly showing them off. Jen wants to tell her that she looks pretty. Instead, all she says is, “You must really like the moon.”

After a smile that ends with Judy sinking her teeth into her bottom lip, Judy is exiting the car. Jen takes time to zip her coat before stepping out into the cold. The rain has picked up, a now near downpour that will soon turn dry hills lush, and Jen watches through a blurry windshield as Judy runs up to the diner; it makes her smirk to watch Judy run in the rain. Judy wears a printed sweater and overalls and Jen forgot to ask why when it’s this cold. Jen reaches behind and into the middle seat, and she grabs Judy’s jacket. 

The surrounding trees cast long shadows on the pavement, and as Jen also ends up swiftly walking in the rain, she abruptly stops when she reaches Judy, who stands under the awning of the restaurant like a dog put out in a storm. 

(It’s very nearly as if all paths point to Judy, the girl with bangs plastered to her forehead, wisps like thin ribbons hitting her cheeks. 

Jen just has such a fondness for this girl, something she knows almost instinctively. She doesn’t like many people, and not many people like her, and this pull towards Judy, someone who doesn’t think she’s so brash she’s unbearable, is one she knows she could never verbalize, only toss around mentally, scolding herself with the hot bite of guilt; she thinks if she tries to tell Judy any sort of thing she feels it would be like she’s stuck in a dream, trying to yell, with no words coming out, the terrifying reality of it so true it threads through your following days, a thought that is easily triggered by a raindrop.) 

Jen sticks out the jacket in her hands, shoving it into Judy, who takes it with a cheery “thank you.” Jen opens the door for Judy, following behind her, and to ease her mind away from any sort of early morning spiral, she picks one thing to focus on as they’re led to a table: the frizziness on the crown of Judy’s head. 

The beige leather of the booth squeaks as they sit down opposite one another; a cut in the fabric rubs against Jen’s jeans and the cotton-like stuffing of the seat bursts. The waiter leaves two menus on the sticky table, the splash of color resembling fruit punch on pearl blue. The blinds on the window are up, and the glass is fogging, the view of the parking lot like the sea at dawn. Judy mentions the pie case to their right, “strawberry cheesecake, dessert of the day,” a pop in juxtaposition to the generally muted brown of the restaurant. 

She’s overly aware of the surroundings, hyper-aware of the dry red crusted over in a straight line down the glass of the ketchup bottle, the crystalline glaze of sugar on the shaker, sticky enough an ant might make a home. Outside, there is a large blue mailbox with water pouring down it, and again, she’s given that feeling of I’m only a visitor here; she grabs the napkin from underneath the clink of silverware and spreads it across her lap. 

As the window radiates a coolness so sharp it’s as if her face is pressed to the glass, her breath stifled, suppressed, she wonders if her dad is having breakfast now, too, and if he’d gone down to their once usual Sunday spot. She wonders if he’s doing exactly this, figuring if it’s an omelet or pancakes kind of morning; she thinks of the possibility of the two of them mimicking each other miles away, two sides of the same coin, and she considers calling home later, decides though before the thought fully forms that it’s far too soon. For one, her dad never even said to call, and two, he’s probably relishing in the fact that she’s not home. It’s only been a day, after all. 

She watches Judy scan the menu, her index finger tracing breakfast buzz words like orange juice and fresh coffee; everything Judy does seems so deliberate. It’s as if she believes each act deserves a degree of care most people reserve for decisions a step above mundanity, like figuring her morning beverage is the same as buying a forever home. 

When Judy looks up at Jen, she smiles, and she says, “know what you’re gonna get?” and Jen notices that Judy’s sweater has cartoon-like red-topped mushrooms sprinkled across. Jen couldn’t figure what they were before and had worried that they were something... _ specific _ when she had first seen Judy with it on. She’s sorta relieved. 

“Not sure,” Jen finally says. She hasn’t even opened her menu. She looks down at the logo, which is a caricature of an old Italian man, maybe with a Jersey flare, she thinks. Odd branding. 

Judy rubs at her eyes. “I think we need coffee, at least,” she says around a yawn she quickly covers. 

Judy isn’t wearing any rings, something Jen feels strange for noticing, and even more strange for wondering when she took them off. She tries to remember the last moment she saw them, and then she huffs at herself. When Judy opens her eyes, they water, and she looks so sleepy she could pass out at the table. It’d be nice to get some more sleep, and Jen briefly thinks of the backseat, the blankets, the two of them there. Jen lightly shakes her head, and she opens the menu. 

Pancakes, she’s leaning towards. Judy seems like she’d be a good cuddler. Add whipped cream. Like she’d cling to you. Maybe a fruit syrup. Like she’d be your own personal space heater. Sides include bacon or sausage or a fruit medley. They’d have to be close to preserve warmth if they slept in the car. Comes with a cup of coffee or orange juice. Jen thinks that if they do, if it comes down to it, that it would be totally normal to be close. Pancakes, definitely. In this situation, it might be life, warmth, or death, freezing. 

(And Jen would only enjoy it for practicality’s sake. She wouldn’t be bad for wanting it, then.

It’s probably not even going to happen, she reassures herself, and if it does, she’ll keep her promise of the passenger seat as a bed.) 

Breakfast is quiet. Judy stares into her coffee, and it seems to stare right back; she’s enraptured. Or just tired, too. At the local diner before a barely sun risen Sunday’s 7 am, the only score is liturgical, hymns disguised as everyday music. They eat rather quickly for both being lethargic, Judy with waffles, and Jen with pancakes, and each finishes two cups of coffee, with half and half, and simple syrup. 

They split the bill right down the middle. As Jen figures a tip the best she can, Judy begins tracing her index and middle finger on the window, wiping the steam away. Jen watches as Judy draws little squiggles, and hearts, and smiley faces; then, Judy writes her own name, a heart standing in for punctuation. Jen hates that she feels a pang of disappointment when Judy doesn’t write  _ Jen _ , too.

  
*

The rain bounces off the sidewalk and seeps into her jeans as they hustle into the gas station. It twists into this sort of strange cadence, wordless and withdrawn, barely a jumbled string of a sentence traded once inside. Jen hadn’t really thought about how much time they would have,  _ just them _ , and how there are going to be many, many more days together in the car, miles of North America ahead of them. With no one and nothing waiting for her at their destination, it’s beginning to feel a lot like self-sabotage. 

Overhead fluorescence shines into the glass case housing donuts. Jen can’t tell if they’re fresh, but she knows the strawberry one has a black dot masquerading as a sprinkle. Judy goes to reach for the very contaminated one, and Jen says, “Oh, Judy, no, I think that doughnut has an ant on it.” 

“Nooo.” Judy looks at her then, as she drops her hand, her lips in a pouty frown, of course. “You think?” 

Jen nods, looking between Judy and the insect. “Yes. Clearly an ant.” 

Judy shakes her head as she looks at the donut, and she confidently says, “I think it’s just a sprinkle.” 

“It has legs, Judy,” Jen says, and Judy clicks her tongue. Judy stares with a shining empathy into the case like she’s watching animals in a zoo, and Jen is half-expecting a monologue about the unfair treatment of encaptured beings. 

“Should I buy this one and we can set the ant free?” Jen looks at Judy, whose eyes are soft and wide and something resembling a knight in shining armor, and she scoffs. “I think that might be useless. It looks pretty dead.”

“A funeral, then?” 

Jen can’t tell if Judy’s joking so all she says is, “What is wrong with you?”

Judy only  smiles and reaches for the maple bar. The ant suddenly no longer a relevant thought, Jen figures that as long as she isn’t obvious about it she can admit to herself that she’s taken by Judy’s smile. It’s a good smile. 

Judy trails along with her down a few aisles, and Jen’s not even sure what they’re looking for if anything, but Judy keeps glancing at her, and then pointing items out, various snacks, and travel-sized products, mentioning briefly if she likes them or not. Despite herself, Jen thinks she could listen to Judy list why the invention of mini M&Ms is genius for hours. She just talks with so much fervor, it’s admirable, how she  _ cares _ . 

Jen’s examining a packaged chocolate chip muffin, and it smells more chemical than anything sweet, when she hears Judy from a few inches to her right, saying, “Ooh, Jen,” and waving her over. “Look…,” she says, as soon as Jen's there, showing her a spread in a magazine.  _ The Butterfly Conservatory at Niagara Falls _ , it says in big, white block print,  _ over 2,000 butterflies!  _ Judy explains that it’s only an hour away, a perfect winter activity at Niagara Falls and that as a kid, butterflies were her favorite insect. 

“Cool,” Jen dumbly says, clenching her jaw at that being the only thing she can conjure up. 

“Just something to consider,” Judy says, and she slides the magazine back into the holder. 

“Do you like bugs?” Jen asks, and she shrugs casually like if Judy dreamt of being an entomologist it would be cool instead of terrifying, “Or something? I just mean, like, because of the ant. And now butterflies. I’m sensing a pattern here.” 

“Well, not necessarily.” Judy smiles softly, and as if her mission statement, she says, “I just like to extend respect to all living beings.” 

And where Jen knows she would normally laugh, and even possibly mock such a thing, she finds it endearing. It’s probably just because Judy, it seems, is quite likely one of the only people on this earth who doesn’t routinely make her want to smash their head in just by existing; being ridiculously sentimental only works because this is Judy, the purveyor of the wear your heart on your sleeve movement. 

(Jen had hoped it would be easy, and she had sort of decided in between bouts of sleep last night that whatever it is that she feels for Judy, a too-strong-mixed drink of emotions, is rightful to be ignored, folded up and stored somewhere safe. Only will it see daylight in years to come, when thinking about what this means will not ruin a friendship Jen’s lucky to even catch a glimpse of.

But it’s  _ not _ easy, because it's not easy to feel nothing. It takes work...and, well, maybe Jen’s grown lazy.) 

Judy’s asking her if she prefers apples or bananas, and the only tangible emotion Jen can name is anger. And anger, Jen’s learned, is uncontrollable; anger leaves her hot and hollow, burning like alcohol on a scraped knee, seeping in and taking over until there’s so much anger it’s like it’s the only thing she’s ever felt. Sleep-deprived, on the precipice of something slow, yet burgeoning, a saguaro cactus about to grow its first branch, there’s suddenly so much anger it’s the only thing that reminds her she’s alive. 

And then, as they walk to the front of the store, Judy's palm is flat on the middle of her back, though Jen can barely feel it with all the layers she’s wearing, but it’s there, and it radiates, and it soothes. Judy drops her hand once they reach sight of the cashier, and all Jen can think as she requests $35 on pump 3 is how nice a feeling this guidance is, how gentle, how comforting, how right. How Judy induces anger, and yet dissipates it, too. As Judy lays their snacks on the counter, Jen imagines standing in line for groceries, and having a hand on her back, a sign of intimacy she sees from men and women alike, a sign of intimacy she’s had but never knew could feel so much like something she’s never distinctly known until now. 

As they enter into rain so light it’s like mist belonging to the shore, Jen figures if Judy’s touch triggers something this strong within her, she needs to lean away from it. 

When they approach their car, Jen passes off the doughnut bag to Judy, who juggles two bananas, a bran muffin, and off-brand potato chips. Judy gets into the driver’s seat, and Jen bites her tongue, figuring she’ll offer to drive after she pumps gas. 

Outside, there’s the comforting smell of rain on concrete and the overwhelming worry that any minute, she’s going to lash out, and really hurt Judy. 

Jen begins to pump gas, and the angle is odd, only able to see a fractured outline of Judy’s side profile due to the car’s door frame being in the way, but she stares because there’s no way Judy can see her doing so. Judy tucks her hair behind her ears and then fiddles with the hoop of her earrings. They catch the sliver of the day’s light, only for a moment before it’s lost. When Jen breaks her stare, she catches sight of Judy, in the driver’s side rearview mirror, looking at her. Judy smiles, almost in an embarrassed drawl, and she looks away. Jen bites the inside of her cheek, and she looks away, too. 

Jen sticks her hands in her pockets, exhaling hard, watching her breath float off into the air. She tells herself not to look again, and to play it off; she watches the meter on the gas pump climb. Her jacket is growing damper, and she’d really like another hot cup of coffee. Still, she thinks of Judy, how warm Judy’s hands on her skin would be, and then, she tenses, figuring the thought comes from the cold. 

When Jen’s done, she opens the driver’s side door and says, “I’d like to drive. Please.”

“Oh,” Judy says, and she nods, and then clambers over to the passenger side. Jen forgoes the  _ why, Judy?  _ and they each settle into the car, Judy beginning to eat her donut. 

After a second of silence, where Jen takes her coat off, Judy says, “Soooo, how about those butterflies?”

“Uhh,” Jen says with a laugh, exasperated. “I won’t lie to you Judy...they scare me.”

“They scare you?” Judy says, almost soothingly, and Jen has to push that bitter feeling down.

“I mean, Jesus, it’s fine, they just,” Jen says, purposely fielding off Judy’s genuine tone, “they just...flutter. So much. It’s excessive.”

“Um, well. I think it’s normal, though,” Judy says, reassuringly, “Like, I think it’s a biological thing. Anyway, we do  _ not _ have to go if you’re really scared.”

Jen thinks for a moment. There doesn’t seem to be a legitimate reason, not rooted in selfishness, to say no. Even though all Jen says is, “you said it takes an hour?” Judy beams, and in return, Jen finds Judy’s light ricocheting within her chest. 

  
*

After studying the map, and gaining a semi-understanding of the route needed, Jen starts back on the main road and then takes a right down Cranberry Way, a sidewalk-less street with two churches on either side, like a bookend. 

The road is one way, residential, and quiet. Jen eyes houses with white wood, grey concrete, porches that wrap around, and little stoops with red-bricked steps. There are three churches along this street alone, and she wonders what biblical discourse went on for this to be the case. The music in the car is soft, a croon something like The Everly Brothers, a drawn-out chorus of dream, dream, dream, the sun continuing to come out as if the two of them lull in the light inch by inch as they drive down the road. 

Quickly enough, Jen starts to feel a little prickly. She just can’t get comfortable, her back somehow already sore. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the current song, sort of zoned out once the melody made it clear it was going to be another three minutes of country, but then it’s,  _ Women like you, they’re a dime a dozen, you can buy ‘em anywhere,  _ Judy mimicking the twang, and Jen scrunches her nose. 

_ Cause you ain’t woman enough to take my man.  _

Jen briefly looks over at Judy, trying to gauge her reaction to the lyrics. Judy only continues humming along, so Jen turns the music level down, and says, only half-jokingly, “This isn’t very feminist, Judy.”

Seeming slightly surprised by Jen butting in, Judy says, “I know,” like it’s a huge bummer, “but there’s just something about Loretta Lynn...I let it slide.”

Jen hmms, and nods, and says, “How do you,” and then pauses, nervous, for some stupid reason. She grips the steering wheel tighter. This is why she’s driven in silence so far. “You know a lot of music. It’s impressive.”

“Oh, thanks,” Judy says, proudly. Jen glances at her, and lightly smiles back. A whole, full-body chill every time Judy smiles at her is a little excessive, she thinks. 

“I just like to think of myself as a very open person,” Judy then says, adding on, “in many, many ways.”

And Jen looks over at Judy, who is already looking at her with this specific yet undefined stare. Not blank, but sort of like, catch my drift? Which, no, Jen doesn’t. 

“Alright,” Jen says, a little unsure. “Thanks for sharing...that.”

Jen turns the music back up, but Judy doesn’t seem to catch on. She says, over the sound of Abba’s saxophone, “I think I wanna, maybe, I haven’t decided yet, try poutine.” 

“The cheese gravy fry thing?” 

“I think it’s actually cheese curds and gravy and fries.” 

“Hm,” Jen makes as she shifts in her seat, trying to stretch her back, “why do you want that?”

“They like it there,” Judy says, slightly crossed, like she must defend Canadian cuisine or else they won’t be let across the border, “it must be good.”

After Jen sorta entertains the idea of poutine, she agrees on switching drivers after this next stop, and she doesn’t even have to consciously think about ignoring any single thought, she just hums along to familiar melodies...and then she looks at Judy’s nose for far too long for being behind the wheel. She stares at the slant and the point, and the little lines across it when she scrunches, when she mouths certain words like,  _ love me or leave me make your choice but believe me,  _ and what the fuck, when has she ever cared about the anatomy of a nose this much? She feels her eyes burn, and then gloss over, a reaction so sudden and unexpected it induces a twist in her gut. There’s this blurriness like looking directly into the sun, a mix of tiredness, uneasiness, and something resembling guilt that’s leaving her on the surgical table. 

As she eyes the white lines, the prodding feeling like a needle to skin overwhelms; the urge to say something cruel, and unfounded—it’s almost like she’s programmed to spout something acerbic and coiling and metallic tongued. She had never thought of herself as anything to write home about, but now she’s having to force herself to not say something mean. It’s sort of horrible how badly she wants to start a fight with Judy, to see if Judy can be cruel, to see what Judy does when she’s hurt because it nearly feels like Jen could murder someone and Judy would forgive and forget.

Jen tries to think of something breezy.

“I can’t believe you thought I couldn’t drive.”

(Maybe breezy looks like teasing.)

“Hey now,” Judy says, suddenly repositioning, tucking her right leg under herself. It’s sort of a whole spectacle within the confines of a seatbelt. “It wasn’t anything personal. I just thought New Yorkers didn’t drive.” 

“I’m deeply offended,” Jen jokes, and so worried it falls flat, she veers quickly. Without a glance, she says, “You know, I’m surprised  _ you _ even drive. You give me the vibe of like, a hippie who thinks cars are gonna kill the earth.” 

Judy actually scoffs. “Well...you’re not wrong, but I think it’s my turn to be offended.” 

When Jen takes her eyes off the road, Judy fixes her an icy gaze, and again, Jen’s stomach drops. At any point, Judy could switch and pick her apart, could have been hiding a bitter sharpness where genuineness is shown, and this new look might be the tipping point.

Judy says, “Does your accent come out when you’re mad?” like she already knows the answer. 

Jen huffs and looks away. “I’m not mad.” 

“Oh,” Judy says, nodding, and all innocent, “when you’re yelling, then?”

“I’m not yelling,” Jen says, indignant.

“Okay,” Judy says, a lilt there at the end like she’s forfeiting. 

Jen narrows her gaze, though stays on the road. “When was I yelling?” 

“Yesterday, at that driver.” 

“Okay, well, can you blame me?”

“No, that guy was a total dick.” 

“Judy here using the big curse words today.”

“Maybe I’ve got a mouth on me,” Judy says, and Jen must imagine her smirk. 

It’s quiet between the two, then, Jen left to wonder if they will hit any sort of eventual highway traffic. It’s quiet long enough for Jen to question herself because now, everything feels fine. Talking to Judy—it suddenly feels okay again. It feels as easy as it had been before like she’s slipped back into the world she had thought she and Judy had been so effortlessly crafting. Maybe it’s a fluke, and she’s over thought it, overcomplicated the pull she has towards Judy. Maybe she’s just not used to having a good friend. Maybe it’s a little more simple than she thought. 

And then, Judy blurts, “Do you know what ketamine is, Jen?”

And Jen scrunches her face. She hadn’t been expecting that. “I’ve heard of it. Why?”

“Just curious,” Judy says, “I kinda wanna do it. Just to see, you know?”

“No,” Jen says, “I don’t know.”

Judy nods, humming. “I think it’s a club drug.”

“Like, disco?” Jen bites her tongue, thinking how lame she sounds.

“I dunno, actually,” Judy says, “All I really know is that my friend tried it last New Years', and he thought it would be similar to Adderall for him because he has like, ADHD, but it literally knocked him out before midnight.” 

Jen says, “That would’ve been nice last night.”

“You couldn’t sleep, either?” 

Jen shakes her head. 

“Did you think the bed was too hard?”

“Like a slab of brick.” 

“And it was so cold.” 

“The sheets were also very thin.” 

“I say we splurge tonight and get a place with insulation. And maybe we find that ketamine.” 

“Judy,” Jen says sternly, but ends with a laugh. “I’m not gonna use ketamine.” 

“Okay, okay, I would never force you to.”

“Thank you.” 

“Maybe we’ll stick to weed, then. I just want you to relax a bit,” Judy says, and she shifts so her back is against the car door, and Jen double-checks that it’s locked. “I can feel your tense energy, and it’s calling for me to calm it.” 

Jen's about to mock her, but it turns into a laugh. “Is my energy telling you anything else?” she says, then making sure to perfect a joking tone, “Like fuck off, maybe?”

“Mmm, no,” Judy says, and Jen forces herself to stay with eyes on the road despite how badly she wants to look. “I’m getting a nervous, on edge,  _ tense _ feeling, but nothing that tells me to fuck off.” 

Judy’s right. Jen realizes how caught up in the moment she was just then, and she exhales roughly through her nose. She continues to look forward, through the windshield at the pavement. It’s easy until it’s not. 

“You’re a weird person, Jude.” 

“Jude?” 

Fuckin-a, she thinks to herself. What’s that all about? “Yeah,” Jen says, shrugging, like she didn’t just skip to the nickname stage of friendship, “Jude. Judy. Tomayto, tomahto.”

It takes a second, one where because Judy hasn’t spoken, Jen has to look at her—she might be entirely put off by a nickname, Jen knows she would be. Upon the look, Judy hastily says, “I’ve never been nicknamed before,” and her face brightens with a light pink spreading across her cheeks, “well, affectionately, at least.” 

Jen narrows her gaze at the girl across from her who unenthusiastically shrugs, says, “dumb, I know,” and Jen wants to ask what she means by that, but Judy looks nearly like she regrets the words, so Jen only says, “No one’s ever called you Jude? Seems like a logical nickname to me.” 

Judy shakes her head. Jen doesn’t think she’ll say it again.

“It’s a hard name to nickname. _Judy_. Doesn’t even rhyme with anything,” Jen says. “Jude will have to do it.”

“No, I love it,” Judy says, reassuringly, and she leans into the console, as into Jen as she can seemingly without trying to interfere with her driving, and then leans slightly away like she’s retracting, a spring drawn back. 

“Well, I need one for you now,” Judy says. 

“Jen kinda is my nickname.” After Judy only looks at her expectantly, she offers, “Jennifer.” 

“Ohhhh,” Judy says, moving totally back and into her own seat. Jen doesn’t allow herself to look, the rush in her chest verging on overwhelming; the ache in the reality of missing the closeness doesn’t feel like the run of the mill.

“You didn’t catch onto that?” Jen rushes out.

“I thought it might be Jenna,” Judy says, contemplating as if it still could be.

“Jenna? Ew.” 

“What? Jenna’s cute.”

“No.”

“You aren’t a modern girl?” 

“If that makes me a modern girl, then no,” Jen firmly states. Then, adds on, “You know, my dad thought your name might’ve been Judith.” 

“Oh,” Judy says, sharply, like she’s trying to hide disgust.

“What? No to Judith?”

Judy shakes her head. “Not a fan. It’s even more of an old lady name.” 

“Judy’s not so bad.” 

“Well, thank you, Jennifer.” 

“Oh, no,” Jen says, warningly, “No.”

“No to Jennifer?”

“No to Jennifer.”

Judy glances at her, and as they enter what resembles a cloak of forest, any and all light disappearing like clouds covering the sun, Jen says, “If you call me Jennifer I will call you Judith, even if that’s not your name.”

Judy laughs. “That could be cute though. Jennifer and Judith. That’s cute, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not,” Jen maintains.

“Okay, no Jennifer.” 

Judy still pisses her off. She’s safe. 

Jen finally looks at Judy, who softly confirms, “Just Jen, just Judy.”

  
*  
  


Hot, humid, and in a dome-shaped building makes up a large portion of the afternoon. Judy says there are 2,000 butterflies, but you can’t move through the greenhouse without at least one fluttering right by, there might as well be a million and one living here. 

It starts out with Jen following behind Judy, in a ragged slumping down the beaten path sort of mood. Jen isn’t trying to be a drag, but so far it’s just unbearably warm, and she’s a little too slick and sweaty for her liking. The paths that weave through the greenhouse are narrow and have large plants with lengthy vines overarching, and if you look up, you see through clear plats all around you, windows into a cloudy blue sky. A few trees reach the top, nearly looking overgrown from the space they’re provided. 

Jen sort of just blindly follows Judy through, avoiding the butterflies the best she can, which is to say not at all, and she smiles at Judy when the girl turns around, beaming.  _ Maybe _ it’s worth it. 

She keeps forgetting that they’re in a whole other country. It’s odd, everything seems so familiar, so alike on the surface to America. They crossed a bridge over a strait of water and as if Jen were a kid watching a movie, she had half expected something magical to happen. The biggest difference, so far, is that signage is in English and French...at every “exit” sign it also says the French word “sortie” but that’s about it. Life’s little disappointments, she supposes. 

Judy’s looking down, into the plants, onto this pale blue saucer, with half a dozen butterflies, their wings lightly going. The sign right above it says “Butterflies Feeding! Do Not Disturb!” and somehow, they are all exactly the same deep forest green color, and black with white dots, perfectly symmetrical. Judy leans her hips against the metal railing, and Jen joins her, and all Judy does in reply is brush into her, shoulders touching. “These are the ugly ones,” Judy says in a mock whisper. 

Jen laughs. “So harsh.” 

“I mean, sorry,” Judy says, wincing at herself, “I don’t think they are ugly, but I feel like most people do because they look more like moths than anything else.” 

Jen leans in, hovering above them. “They’re cool looking.” 

So far, Jen’s learned the scientific name for a butterfly is “Rhopalocera,” and she really cannot pronounce it; when she tries to repeat it in her head, it’s all jumbled, flowing something like “rhinopalcra,” instead. One of the butterflies suddenly is up and leaving, and Jen leans away as it flutters up and into an abyss of plants. She watches until it’s camouflaged, the way it both rapidly flutters and floats through the air as if completely weightless, until her eyes fall on Judy—Judy who is looking at her with a proud gleam in her eyes. Judy reaches out, and Judy squeezes her arm, and Judy says, “See, they’re not so bad.”

Jen’s first thought is that nothing is ever as bad as you think it’s going to be. Then, she shrugs Judy off, and says, “I mean, I’m not actually, like literally afraid of butterflies. They just seem like they might have ulterior motives.” 

“It’s okay if you  _ are _ scared, though,” Judy says, and they begin walking again, side by side as if glued to the hip. “However you feel is just fine.”

Earnestness, at the degree Judy displays, is a gut punch. She’s so concerned, and so sincere, and so willing. Such a small thing, a half-assed sort of true, sort of not response from Jen and Judy’s sticking to empathy as if she only operates on this one singular setting. Jen’s nearly envious. 

Judy lists off a few factoids, like how some butterflies are carnivores, and how they gain the most essential nutrients from drinking mud puddles. Judy says she loved reading as a kid and spent after school hours over at the local public library. She shares that she often fixated on certain things, the life of a butterfly one of them. She loved the moon, she mentions, and Jen remembers. Judy says she had been so in love with the stars she was dead set on becoming an astronaut until math illiteracy got in the way. As Judy goes on, Jen has the urge to say anything at all but doesn't know what exactly to share. She thinks she could say the dumbest thing in the world and still, Judy would be encouraging and open and true. 

Near the exit, there is a gift shop they stop inside of. Mostly full of butterfly related items, there are a few things Canada themed, like maple lollipops, hoodies with ‘Ontario’ printed across. They stay side by side as they have been, and as they both look at small souvenirs like pens, and keychains, with Judy in the middle of illustrating which key chain she might be interested in, Jen suddenly feels Judy’s knuckles brush against her own. She assumes it’s nothing if not an accident, but then Judy lingers. Judy presses the back of her hand into Jen’s, and Jen thinks she might do something insane like saying a cracked open  _ stop _ , or something worse like break into tears. 

Their hands are hidden between them, and only for a second does Jen entertain this, noticing the rough feel of Judy’s cold hands, the small dips between Judy’s knuckles, before Judy’s detaching herself, saying how she wants to look at the prints. 

Jen simply follows, and she feels like she’s coming down from the quickest high she’s ever experienced. The pounding that starts in her throat reverberates, spreading throughout her body. Judy’s drawn to a specific print, this chromolithograph one, she says it is, of six or seven butterflies in varying colors and sizes. She says she thinks she’s going to buy it and asks Jen if any catch her eye. Jen’s having trouble focusing, though she acts as if she’s intently scanning the pictures. There’s one that is so crisp it could be a photograph. With a bright blue background, a girl is there, a butterfly balancing on her nose. Jen eyes it, perhaps a moment too long, and Judy nudges her shoulder. 

“If you like that one, I could recreate it for you,” Judy says, gently, too, still eyeing the grooves in the picture. 

“You paint?” Jen asks, thinking how fitting that seems. 

“It’s my favorite pastime,” Judy says, “but sometimes, I get sad that the person I’ve painted isn’t real. Like, this girl,” Judy gestures to the blonde blue-eyed girl with the butterfly on her nose, “She looks so real, but she’s not, it’s just an amalgamation. I always feel so sad that they don’t exist.” 

“I’ve never thought of it like that,” Jen says, surprised by her own contemplation. Jen waits for a moment, letting Judy look through the prints. She considers asking Judy about painting and assumes it would be fine. Judy brought it up, after all, and who doesn’t want to be asked about their craft? 

“What do you like to paint?” Jen asks, folding her arms across her chest.

“Eyesores, mostly,” Judy easily says, reading the back of another piece. 

Jen must be missing something. “Like...sores...on the eye?”

“Oh, no, sorry,” Judy says, and she slides the picture back in the slot, “like, when people say something is ugly, like a run-down house, or like, a water tower...I always hear people say that’s an eyesore. But I don’t think it’s ugly at all. So I’ll take a photograph and paint it to show it a little love.”

“I’m just glad you aren’t painting literal sores,” Jen says, and this time, Judy trails behind her. 

“Oh, I paint those, too.” Jen makes an _okay, whatever_ kind of face back at her, and Judy says, “Kidding,” as if it wasn’t clear. There’s another section of the gift shop they haven’t yet perused. A floral diner mug is on display, one that is perfectly reminiscent of Judy’s mushroom sweater. Judy doesn’t seem to think so, though, and argues that the tones are off, whatever that means. 

If Jen’s ever collected anything on purpose, it’s mugs. She’s always liked picking up new ones from diners, or coffee shops, a long-lived tradition between her parents. As she’s scanning the mugs with Judy, she spots an enamel mug amongst three of the same. The base is a light beige, the handle pure ceramic, with butterflies neatly curving around, their official name’s printed underneath. 

“That’s so pretty,” Judy says, looking between Jen and the mug. 

“Yeah,” Jen softly says. She doesn’t allow herself to reach for it, instead, she halfway turns to Judy and says, “My mom used to love enamel mugs. They reminded her of camping as a kid.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Judy says, endeared. Judy reaches for the mug, and Jen watches her grasp it in her hands, intently looking as if inspecting it. “Do you want it?” Judy then asks, looking at her. “It’s only ten bucks.” 

Jen shakes her head, but she doesn’t know why her immediate reaction is no. It might be nice to have something reminiscent of her mom. She thinks of how she has always been surrounded by a home with so much of her mom’s life still in it, as if only on pause. There’s still a sewing machine set up in their extra room, still crocheting hooks and yarn on the desk, projects in the process from a bookmark to a sweater. She had never considered collecting items she can mark her mom onto. 

“Why not,” Jen states, Judy mid-way to setting it back on the shelf. Judy softly smiles and hands it over to Jen, and Jen mumbles a “thanks,” as she holds it in her hands. 

It feels sort of out of the blue when Judy says, “My mom’s not in the picture either, so I get it,” as they find the line for checkout. Jen, of course, finds no reply, and she nearly tries to play it off like she didn’t hear Judy. Assuming her mom is just not a part of her life is almost worse than assuming she’s dead. Then, it feels nothing out of the blue when Judy says, “I don’t wanna be overbearing, or anything, but...how are you?”

And Jen shrugs, her shoulders heaving up and slugging down, much more animatedly than she ever carries herself. “Fine.” 

“Okay,” Judy says, nodding, and she falls into a ramble, “I just wanna make sure. I’m sorry. I just know leaving home can be scary, and I know it’s only been a day, but homesickness can happen quickly.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be homesick,” Jen says, clipped. She’s not sure she’s convincing enough.

Judy seems to think for a moment. “Maybe you could call your dad?” 

Jen immediately snaps. “I don’t know why I would do that.” 

“It might help,” Judy says, even-toned, though Jen thinks she should be a little bolder if this is the route she’s after. Judy says, “You seem a little sad,” and Jen doesn’t know if it’s the being perceived well, or the being perceived at all that does it. 

“Mmm,” Jen makes, tilting her head, and the condescension drips before she can think to reign it in. “It never has before, but thanks for the suggestion.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Judy says, and Jen can feel her eyes trying for contact.

Jen shakes her head, dismissive. “It’s fine.”

“I just thought—”

“Judy,” Jen says, clipped, and looking right at her. “I never said anything like that about my mom.”

Judy’s lips part, forming a small ‘o.’ 

“Just,” Jen begins, though is given pause. Judy’s too fucking nice; being angry with her is like screaming down at a small, helpless child. “Don’t ask me about my parents. Okay? Please.”

Judy nods, forcefully. It takes a few seconds for Judy to, but she says, nearly like nothing’s happened, “Well, hey, just so it’s out there...if at any point you want to go back to New York, I honestly would drive you back.”

Jen looks at Judy then,  _ yeah, right  _ written on her face, despite Judy’s claim making perfect sense. Of course she would.

“Seriously, even if we are just about to hit California, right on the edge of Arizona, I would.” 

“Well, thanks,” Jen says, and she doesn’t allow herself to even entertain the proposition for a single second. Judy smiles. 

Jen had thought that if she got to know Judy that there would be something within the girl that Jen hates. That maybe Judy would have some fatal flaw, one large enough that turns Jen off entirely, though it’s like the more she learns about Judy, the more she cares for her, the more she finds there’s a hollowness being filled. Even when Judy irks her, it dissipates so quickly it barely even leaves a nick. 

For instance, though Judy had just frustrated her moments prior, she finds herself again only watching Judy as she casually looks around the space. It’s a mini-greenhouse in here, vines sprawling everywhere, and Jen wishes she had a polaroid, one where the memory is captured in a second. A feeling you can later hold in your palm, stare at, and say I was there. Jen wishes she could show Judy how she sees her, seeing them, these thousands of butterflies. Judy had clearly been taken by the dark green ones, with black around them, like a silhouette in the dark, the print featuring the very kind. Jen could take a picture of Judy, and say, just the way I saw you, seeing them, one winter’s late afternoon.

And as they wait in line, she begins to wonder: how Judy sees herself. Does Judy see kindness? Does Judy see what Jen has come to understand as someone who loves perpetually, what has spun from the thread of their hours together? Can Judy hold up to the light and inspect who she is, and see her heart as clearly as Jen does? 

Severing the ties that are binding them is the self-sabotage that Jen’s always stuck to, and for the first time, she thinks, it might be cruel to do this to someone so undeserving. 

  
*

Turns out, American money is not accepted in Canada. Who would have guessed, Jen thinks, counting the colorful bills with people she can’t name on them. Judy takes a sharp right turn, barely missing the green light, and says something about how it’s so nice of the gift shop cashier to warn them that though they might accept American dollars, most every else doesn’t, and point them in the direction of the nearest currency exchange. Yeah, it was, _and_ their money will go further here. 

It takes about an hour or so to reach the city, a half an hour to venture through it, Judy no expert on maneuvering a car through a metropolis. They employ a similar method as last night’s in choosing a place to stay, searching for signage with the correct buzzwords, openings, vacancy, blah, blah, though this time as they are driving down street after street, Judy is reeled in by  _ Amour Inn  _ dimmed in neon red, vertically displayed in between two windows of what Jen figures is a walk-up. The office is on the ground floor, the building smudged between two of the exact same. The name worried Jen briefly, sounding something exactly like a sex shop, but apparently, her mind was just other places.

It isn’t planned, and it’s only a little after four, but once they rent the room, they both end up napping, Jen for an unfortunate four hours. When Jen wakes, lying on top of the quilted comforter as well as fully dressed, her shoes the only thing discarded, the room is dimmed yellow, cozy, and warm. Jen’s got the post-nap haze of where am I, and it doesn’t help that she’s in unfamiliar territory. Judy is on her own bed flipping through a pocket-sized Bible, and when she notices Jen’s awake, her first words are “I’m starving.” 

Judy’s favorite food, next to butternut squash soup, apparently, is vegetable pho. She says she loves soup, any and all kinds, and that she really doesn’t like to solidify favorites because she doesn’t want to leave any single one out, but that pho is just that good. Conveniently enough, there is a Vietnamese restaurant two doors down from their room.

Jen’s had fresh spring rolls, but never pho, and Judy talks so highly of the soup for like, upwards of five minutes straight, it doesn’t seem there’s any saying no to this one. Judy mentions she’ll shower while Jen goes to pick up the food (Jen, ever the volunteer for a moment's reprieve), and as Jen ventures out into the streets, she’s soothed in the cold by the promise of a warm shower after dinner. 

There’s always going to be something about the atmosphere of a city. She had left the confines of a sprawling metro for only over a day and it’s a relief to be in some semblance where people huddle together again. Here, the air is crisp, colder than New York’s, but the people aren’t as harsh, and they aren’t in as much of a hurry. She thinks maybe she should begin actually thinking about what she’s going to do in Los Angeles, but figures she can put it off for a little bit longer. Still, it's not like she has any clue.

It’s a quick trip out for food, and she’s careful not to wipe out on the black ice still going strong; as she walks up the steps to their room, the stairs wedged in between their building and the next, she mulls over not getting ID’d when buying bottles of beer at the corner store. On the way out of the shop she sees displayed above the door, next to the exit/sortie sign in lime green, that the drinking age is 19, and it’s funny how laws vary, and how laws can be totally arbitrary, and how when Jen unlocks the door and walks inside Judy’s leaving the adjacent bathroom pantless and in only an upper thigh hitting t-shirt. Jen tightens her grip on the food, evades eye contact as Judy greets her, and sets the takeout on the desk.

“Ooh, beer!” Jen hears Judy’s disembodied voice say, mixed with the shuffling around behind her, and she really hopes Judy’s putting on some fucking pants. 

“Yep,” Jen says, untying the knot of the bag. She pulls out the containers of broth, and damn if it doesn’t smell good.

Judy is then beside her, and Jen glances because apparently, she’s just that kind of person. She looks at Judy, her hair soaking into her shirt, making it slack at the chest, and she grits her teeth. She can’t even think about the lack of pants. 

“Anyway,” Jen says, and she pulls out the spring rolls. “Here it is.” 

“Hmm, I feel like this is a local beer,” Judy says, reaching for the bottle. She pops the cap, and Jen didn’t think it was any sort of twist off. She hopes Judy didn’t hurt herself. 

“Ooh, it’s good,” Judy says enthusiastically, and as Jen is focused hard on trying to open the container of broth without spilling, droplets of water hit her arm from Judy’s still damp hair. 

Once they eat (and Judy thankfully puts some fucking pants on), awkwardly side by side at the narrow desk, which Jen’s found is always in silence so plain it can only be branded as safe, Jen moves her chair over to the window, and opens it fully only for a moment's breath of air before closing it again, the cold getting the better of her, but at least the view of the street they’ve ended up on is shaping up to be good for people watching. There’s a very large freeway that cars rumble past, and as Judy sits on the edge of the bed closest to the window, crisscrossed with a blanket wrapped around herself, beer bottle meeting her lips again and again, Jen says, “I could get into serious trouble supplying alcohol to someone underage.” 

“Good thing I’m not underage,” Judy slyly says, tipping her head back as she sips.

“Yeah, maybe not here,” Jen shoots back, and takes a swig, too, looking out the window. 

Jen’s not drunk,  _ drunk,  _ or anything, and she’s not necessarily a lightweight either, but this beer must be very strong because she’s starting to feel a little fuzzy. 

“Not in America either,” Judy says, after a moment. Her finger taps the dime-sized rim of the bottle. 

It takes Jen a second. “What?” 

“Not in Amer–”

“No, I mean, I heard you.” And with an unsure laugh, she spouts, “Did you lie about your age?”

Jen wonders if  _ Judy’s _ a little drunk. Judy stands, and she sways slightly, “I had a birthday,” she says, so casually Jen has to scoff, and Judy goes for the other beer on the table. 

“A birthday?” Jen asks, perhaps too harsh. She’s eyeing Judy as she once again effortlessly twists the cap off. They  _ are _ twist offs, and Judy did  _ not _ hurt herself. 

“As we all do?” Judy says, “Do you wanna share this?”

“When was it?” Jen says, embarrassingly affected by not knowing. She  _ must _ actually be drunk. 

“A week and a half ago,” and it’s so nonchalant, like Jen not even knowing her age or anything is no biggie. “The day I got the tattoo,” Judy says, sitting back down at the foot on the bed.

As if filter-free, it just sort of tumbles out. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

Judy looks surprised, nearly unsure, and Jen registers the thread of hurt she speaks with, a flaw pinpointed in her exterior. 

“Well,” Jen says, like an impatient child, “why not?” 

“I don’t know,” Judy says, softly, despite this veering into a near interrogation, “I just didn’t think to.” Judy looks small like she’s caving in on herself. “It’s nothing personal at all.” 

Jen waits a moment. She huffs. “We could’ve gotten something special for dinner, at least.” 

“We did!” Judy eagerly says.

Jen rolls her eyes, tilting her head at this ridiculous girl. “A dollar slice from a hole in the wall isn’t necessarily birthday worthy, Judy.”

“No, it was,” Judy says, and so earnestly. “That was honestly a really good day.” 

As Judy gives her those shining big brown eyes, Jen bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from copying Judy’s small smile. This has made her feel like a bad friend, Jen decides, that’s where the dissension stems from, because what friend neglects a birthday. 

“What day was that exactly?” Jen asks.

“The 21st,” Judy says, going to take a sip. 

And Jen realizes then, too, that it would’ve been  _ Judy’s _ 21st. She tries not to be disappointed if Judy isn’t. “You definitely should’ve told me though because I would’ve taken you to my favorite bar. You really missed out, they make the best whiskey sours.” 

Judy looks at her, all sympathy. “Well, maybe another time.”

“Yeah,” Jen says, quieter than she likes, and she nods. “I’ll make it up to you if we’re still friends by next year.” 

“There’s nothing to make up, I promise,” Judy says, stern because of the alcohol, Jen’s sure.

And maybe Jen’s  _ really _ feeling the alcohol. “I think you should just let me.” 

Judy's smile turns timid, and she nods. “I think we’ll be friends.”

“Well, you never know,” Jen says, “a lot can happen in a year.” 

In the moments following, Judy extends the drink to Jen, like an on the nose peace offering. There’s something about sharing a drink that excites Jen, but she’s too cloudy to think too much into it. 

“So,” Jen says, “you’re 21.” 

“I am,” Judy says, succinct. 

“Well, I’m still older,” Jen says, and immediately hates that she says it; the scrambling for something witty to say is getting the better of her, though all she then says, is, “I bought three bottles but they only charged me for two,” and then sips. Maybe she needs bedtime. 

“A steal.” Judy practically beams. 

“Yeah, just don’t snitch on me or anything,” Jen says, too serious. 

“I wouldn’t!” Judy says, pouty, and leaning forward. “Why would I?”

“Honestly, Judy?” Jen says, holding the words above Judy, she leans back in the seat. “You seem like a fucking blabbermouth.”

Judy’s lips part and she sits there like she’s trying to teach her mouth to form a sentence, and then she says, “Okay, maybe I am.” 

Jen laughs. She sinks further down in the seat so she’s slouching, and she realizes that Judy’s just staring at her, her gaze unreadable. They’re entering a poor judgment phase of drinking, she thinks, where things are just said with no smokescreen there to mislead. She leans forward, her elbows on her knees, hands clasped and holding the beer bottle by the stem. When she looks at Judy again, still, she’s unreadable, though her breath looks and even sounds labored, and Jen senses the shift. She doesn’t know what to do with it. 

“I guess you did say you’ve got a mouth on you,” Jen says, and Judy tenses and she shifts to sitting up straight, crossing her legs all in an elegantly swift motion. Jen eyes her. “Whatever that means,” she adds on. 

“Well, wouldn’t you like to know,” Judy says back, but the lilt isn’t as confident. Jen laughs it off and she focuses on the street lights, and just how much the red neon sign casts a glow.   


  
*  
  


The following morning, Jen sleeps until noon. 

She then spends the rest of the day walking around the city angry that Judy didn’t wake her earlier, frustrated that Judy woke at 8 am and let Jen sleep for hours after. 

Inadequacy of any kind induces guilt, and Jen, riddled with both, hashes and she rehashes, mostly while trailing behind Judy in various different scenarios. It’s such a stupid thing to be mad at herself about, but they agreed on getting an early start to their day, and it feels like another trinket Jen’s adding to the pile as to why she wouldn’t be good enough for Judy anyway. She can’t even get up on time. 

Even so, Jen trails behind Judy in the dress section of a second-hand store, like a boyfriend being dragged around by his girlfriend in a shopping montage of a movie. She even carries Judy's shopping bag and has to try really hard not to look inside of it. She thinks it’s something lacy, like a silk top. There’s a poutine place on a street called Queen they eat at and Jen thinks that gravy on french fries is very much similar to mashed potatoes, just with a different consistency, so there was nothing for her to be too worried about after all. Judy’s the one who ends up disliking it. 

Because the day starts late, it feels as if it ends early, the sun setting on what is like, the shortest day ever.

They’re walking up a street called Spadina, having just hopped off of a streetcar, something Jen’s only seen in movies showcasing San Francisco, and  Judy is holding onto Jen’s arm. Judy is lacing her arm through and holding on, so close she can rest her chin on Jen’s shoulder, and she does...and Jen thinks that it’s okay, this physicality. That maybe it’s nice to have a friend so close. 

Judy says something or other about wanting a snack as they approach a coffee shop, still open past six; Jen gets a black cup of coffee, Judy a mocha, and they station at a table in the corner of the shop, and she ends up sipping on so much of Judy’s, the drink is gone within minutes. Judy doesn’t comment, and Judy only sips on the plain coffee and eats a slice of banana bread. Jen doesn't intrude on that front. 

Jen notices how Judy longingly stares out the large window across the shop; the calmness of night in its gentle, and dim light, the people strolling by, a few here and there entering—Jen’s wrapped in the feeling of contentment, something about the here and the now a memory she’d like to keep. The warmth, maybe, of being kept safe, and of refuge and of Judy and of forgiveness. Judy hadn’t even been mad that she overslept, anyway, saying things about how her body must have needed the rest, and Jen is able to stop the dramatics long enough to realize this. Long enough to appreciate Judy’s calming presence for what it is—a force that urges her to be better. 

“I kinda wish it was summer,” Judy says, some sort of wistful.

“God, I don’t,” Jen says. Judy looks at her then, an amused grin, and the chill Jen feels run up her back has her quickly saying, “Summer is like, the worst season,” in order to ignore it, and force it to pass. 

“Aw, nooo,” Judy says, sort of teasingly. “Who hates summer?” 

Jen stares blankly at her. “Me. I do.”

Judy laughs. “I just thought it would be nice to have been able to go to the lake while here. Or actually visit Niagara Falls. I also have been worrying whether or not we can find a drive-in at this time of year.”

Jen's momentarily curious as to why Judy had been thinking about that, and then she remembers her brief mention surrounding the topic, and she feels her face heat up. She hadn’t expected Judy to be serious, though maybe she should’ve. She thinks Judy only ever acts on feeling. 

“So, we may have to wait until California to do that,” Judy adds on, and Jen’s relieved Judy doesn’t seem to notice the flush in her face. 

“I really don’t know if I could go to another drive-in,” Jen says, urging on the side of  _ please take this as a firm no.  _

Judy gives her those sympathetic eyes, and Jen shrugs lightly. 

“Well,” Judy says. “No pressure at all. If you’d like to go we can go, and if not, we can forget about it and you can hate the drive-in forever and ever. Deal?” 

"Sure," Jen says, flatly. And then, the barista is there, letting them know that they have about five minutes until the place closes. When he leaves, Jen asks Judy if she'd wanna go to a bar or two. She had seen a bunch while they were walking around, and alcohol can be such a good friend. 

“Oh, jeez, that reminds me,” Judy says, nose scrunched up. “This guy at the thrift shop randomly asked if we wanted to get a drink.”

“We?” Jen asks, leaning back in her chair, “Who is we?”

“You and I, I guess,” Judy says, her index finger tracing the edge of her mug, wiping at a drip of coffee. 

“What exactly happened, here?” Jen asks, beginning to tap her foot. 

“Oh, I...” Judy says, and she pauses like she’s considering how to explain. “I guess it’s a little weird when you think about it. He came up to me after I got done trying my stuff on, like as I was exiting the changing room.”

“Yeah, that’s weird, Jude,” Jen says, sternly, and she feels guilty for not being there, for steering clear and loitering around the kitchenware at the other end of the store. 

“Well, he just asked if “you and your friend wanna join me for a drink?” Judy says with a small shrug, “I mean, I said no thank you.” 

Immediately, crafted from Jen’s anger, and worry, and inadequacy, it’s, “Why do men do that?” and an exaggerated shrug. “God, who just goes up to someone and asks that? I would never do that.”

“Well, hey, it’s not that crazy,” Judy says like she’s really defending this freak. 

“To go up to someone after they just left a dressing room? And ask them out? Yeah, Judy, that’s a bit weird, I’m sorry.”

“Maybe, yes,” Judy says, with a hint of acquiescence, “but, I don’t think going up to someone and talking to them is weird.”

“Okay, but did you enjoy it?”

“It didn’t bug me at the time.”

"And now?" 

"It's...yeah, it was a little weird."

“He probably just thought you were hot.”

“Jen, come on,” Judy says like she’s humbled, and Jen butts in, “No, I mean, he went up to you and what? Asked if you wanted to get a drink? Why else would he do that?”

“He asked if you wanted to come, too,” Judy says, like  _ hey, don’t be so hard on yourself.  _

Jen scoffs. “Clearly he wanted to like…” she bites her tongue, and then she huffs a breath, and she tries not to be too brash, but Judy’s soft, stupid fucking nervous-looking eyes are steel in the sun, and it’s as if Jen’s accidentally brushed her arm against the heat. “He probably just wanted to fuck you.”

“Jesus,” Judy says, eyes wide, and it might be the very first time Jen’s seen Judy even an inch embarrassed. 

“It’s just weird,” Jen maintains, “Guy goes up to girl and what, you’re supposed to just blindly accept his offer?”

“I mean, no, but,” Judy says, cautiously, and it takes a second, like Judy’s gotta force the words. “Is how  _ we _ met not a little odd to you?”

Jen narrows her eyes. “Well, that’s different.”

“How?” Judy says, somehow without an ounce of condescension. 

“Judy,” Jen says, indignantly, “this isn’t even close to the same thing.”

“Okaaay, I don’t see how but—”

“The difference is,” Jen rushes out, letting the end of the sentence linger above Judy, “that guy was clearly interested in you...and I’m not.”

“Oh,” Judy says, quietly. She nods with a thin line of a smile. “No, yeah,” she seems to confirm, nodding like oh, of course. “Yeah.” 

“I just mean that I don’t have ulterior motives,” Jen says, out of uncomfortableness. “I didn’t call you up on your offer hoping to—” 

“Jen,” Judy says, nodding lightly, “I think I got it.” And Judy smiles softly, but it’s barely there. 

After a moment's silence, Jen's mind like static, Judy says, “I do kinda want to get a drink, though.”

Jen slumps over. After all this, she thinks. “With that guy?”

“Noooo,” Judy says, and like nothing good or bad or even ordinary has happened, it’s, “No. With you.”

  
*

  
Jen exits the bar and she knows she’s drunk because giggles are bubbling out of her. As soon as the chill hits her cheeks the heat of her face is soothed. She breathes in the fresh air, standing in the middle of the sidewalk breathing heaving breaths, and watching the cars woosh by. The Ontario license plates remind her of where she is, and it kinda sorta smells like piss, but she can’t totally fault the city, this _is_ a dive bar. 

There are a few dudes walking by shouting a chorus reminiscent of a song Jen’s clueless of. After they pass, and when least expecting it, she’s knocked into, practically has to tense every muscle in her entire body to keep herself upright, and she’s about to yell some variation of hey, what the fuck, but as she’s turning to grumble in a strangers face, it’s Judy. It’s Judy, of course, who induces the anger, and it’s Judy, of course, who calms it, too. Her eyes are blown, and so dark, and she holds onto Jen’s forearms like they’re her groundling of force; it’s quite possible it works both ways. 

The music from the bar is thumping in her throat, muffled in the air. Judy lazily smiles and leans into her, chest to chest, forehead landing somewhere rough like Jen’s chin. The girl’s a deadweight. 

“You fucking run into me,” Jen says, “and now I have to hold you up, too?”

Judy humms, and Jen feels Judy’s breath on the base of her throat. “What? What, you don’t want to carry me home bridal style?” and the words brush Jen’s skin, and she shudders. 

“Dunno if I’m strong enough for that,” Jen says, helping Judy fully stand. She catches Judy’s eye, and Judy  smiles, and she grabs Jen’s hand, cupping it first. They begin walking, and Jen stares at her arm, extended out for Judy, and Jen thinks all the energy in the world must surface in their grasp, the space where their fingers intertwine. 

Judy is somehow able to lead her for a bit, just walking down the block, the street growing much more barren. She hopes this is the right way back to their room, and she has a feeling it is, recalls the flower shop and the paint store she saw on the way, but she’s starting to second guess if she can even make it or not. Her stomach twists, and the promise of nausea is soon rising. 

“Jude,” Jen says, and then squeezes Judy’s hand. Her name alone is like an exhale. 

Judy slows and looks behind herself, concerned, clearly. “You okay?” 

“Can’t go that fast,” Jen simply says, and she squeezes Judy’s hand again, maybe just because she can, because she’s been given it to hold, and like a child, she wants to test the waters. 

Judy slows, and she falls in line with Jen, and the night air, crisp and sharp, hits her cheeks, turning them scrim red like the skin of an apple. Her hair feels tangled and strained at the scalp, and she can’t understand how, despite the intense chill, she’s burning up. She very well might puke. 

Suddenly, Judy drops her hand. Judy releases her and crosses her own arms against her chest and as Jen thinks it, Judy’s saying it. “I’m  _ so _ fucking cold.” 

It doesn’t feel rife with malice or anything but it’s enough for Jen to scold herself for caring that Judy’s let go. She cares so much, she really does, and she hates that she knows she hates that she cares.

There are a few stars actually visible, the night sky not clear though a deep navy she thinks she may associate with Judy now, a sort of ridiculous thing; every night, the sky reminding her of a person she’s got right here beside her. 

When they walk in the door of their room, Jen’s aware enough to lock the key and the deadbolt and the chain, make sure they are safe and secure before she staggers a few feet and sits down on the bed, immediately slumping over on her back. 

The ceiling is popcorn; Judy is sitting on the bed right next to her, and she looks down into her eyes, and Jen feels like the subject of a portrait. Judy stares at her—the only way Jen can name—as if she matters, and it’s so fucking silly. Jen sits up with the thought she might vomit, but the way Judy grasps at her shoulder and rubs it like she’s trying to calm her...it weirdly soothes her, and it just makes her feel important, and she can’t seem to write it off as anything other than serious, genuine care. And why should she, she thinks. Why should she explain it away? Maybe someone just cares for her, and would that be so bad? 

Judy lightly smiles at her, her hand stilled on Jen’s shoulder. Time, and the way it ticks, stagnates into a thick molasses. Judy lifts her hand, and Jen swears it takes a full minute for it to settle on her cheek, where it then tucks loose hair behind her ear. Judy's fingers brush against Jen's cheek and her heartbeat sits in her throat, so loud it's the score.  Jen’s never really wished for a fairytale style sort of kiss, never wished for a kiss in the rain, never wished for a longing glance at one another’s lips, though the disappointment she feels when she instinctively looks away, and then, Judy, too, leans away instead of in is larger than herself, and a sobering moment wrapped into one. 

(She wonders how many moments like this Judy’s had, wonders if she was ever given the same sense of clarity; the sense that if liking women as a woman can be a reality, if this living, breathing, blossoming person right in front of her can be interested in women, she can be, too, and the world will not stop turning on its axis, she will not die, and life still somehow goes on.)

And then, Judy is up and moving. To stop herself from looking, Jen lies down and presses her face into her pillow. She thinks she immediately starts drooling. S he’s going to pass out any second. And maybe she does, because the next thing she knows, Judy’s lying next to her, and the lights are off. When her vision is clear, though shadowed by night, she realizes Judy’s on her side, facing her. 

And then Jen’s hair is moving, or maybe being moved, and she hears Judy’s laugh, soft and mellow. 

“Are we sharing a bed tonight, drunk-y?”

Jen grumbles into the fabric. “No.”

“Well, you’re in my bed, so.”

Jen can’t muster a reply beyond, “whatever,” and she doesn’t feel totally there in her body. All she knows is that she’s cold, and that there’s heat nearby, and that she wants that warmth. She extends her arm out, trying to grab for a blanket, and she touches what feels like Judy’s forearm. And then, there’s the weight of the sheets and soft cotton, and up to her chin she’s suddenly given a sense of security. The weight shifts, and Jen hears herself say, “just stay,” and she thinks she’s able to tell that Judy’s definitely still there with her, and she can’t fight it. She’s safe, and she’s here, and she’s happy Judy’s so close. 

Judy’s again tucking Jen’s hair out of her face, when,  “I want to know more about you,” is whispered, sealed into the inches between them, “I want to ask you things, but I don’t think you want that.”

It’s delayed, and it must be a dream, but she forces herself to mumble out, “I’ll try,” just in case it’s real.

  
*  
  


When she wakes the next morning, she thinks she dreamt of running out of gas in the middle of nowhere. She forgets the contents of the dream immediately, though for the first several seconds she’s awake she’s left with the lingering feeling of uncertainty, an uneasiness that has seeped from consciousness into a dream state. Jen’s always been a stress dreamer. 

The last thing she remembers before falling asleep is Judy’s fingers on her forehead. How Judy kept moving her hair out of her face and mumbled, “so you don’t eat your hair in your sleep.” She also remembers a hand on her back, though maybe  _ that _ was just a dream.

The red tinge of the sign just outside the window is dimmed by the morning’s light, no longer is it a flashlight in her face, the room now filtered in a peach hue. She first notices the AMO of Amour, the rest cut off from the angle. There’s extra weight in the bed that she’s not at all used to, excess heat from both bodies crammed into one tiny twin bed. Judy’s cheek is squished against Jen’s shoulder, her hair tickling Jen’s neck. They’re both uncovered, the blanket pooling at the end of the bed. They should’ve left the window open instead of just barely cracked, it’s a sauna of body heat, Judy, evidently, a cuddler. The linen-like white lace curtains sway so lightly it could be imagined; the noises of the city comfort for her, the familiarity in waking up with the score of a burgeoning city had been missed the first night away. 

She’s also not hungover, a fucking feat in itself. 

There was a part of her that knew, as they laid side by side until passing out, that Judy would end up curled into her. It felt inevitable, like a rose gold sunset in the midst of summer, one that signals a hot, sweltering tomorrow. Judy’s always reaching out, sleep surely is no exception. 

_ Except _ , Jen thinks, and she tenses, her breath dying, exiting like a final exhale,  _ her _ arm is slung around Judy. She’s the one on her side, and Judy is the one flat on her back, her shirt risen far enough up that Jen feels Judy’s bare skin, and Jen realizes she's the one with her hand resting on Judy’s hip. 

She’s frozen. Like a kid about to be scolded, reprimanded, placed in some sort of time out. She knows she can’t move, Judy will wake, and then what?  _ Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to feel you up in your sleep. _ Jesus Christ, she thinks, shirt half-up Judy’s stomach and all. 

She needs to move her hand, at least. Subconsciously touching Judy is one thing, but being awake and practically caressing the girl’s bare hip is very much another. Her heartbeat is bouncing around in her chest, and her skin is so hot it must be what fire on flesh feels like. 

When she lifts her hand, she dumbly flexes her fingers, close enough that her thumb ends up brushing against Judy’s skin, and it’s as if Judy’s a knife, though withered down enough Jen’s left only slightly scraped. She brings her hand into herself like she’s protecting it, and then she closes her eyes, the sting of sleep urging her to. If she can just steady her heart, she can fall back asleep. 

Judy’s hip bone sticks out more than Jen’s does. Judy’s is pointy, and not as covered by flesh. Judy wasn’t sweaty, dripping, nothing like in drops or in beads, but she was slick, and almost sticky, the feeling of sunscreen in the dip of your neck while on a walk in the sun. She covers her eyes with her hand, pressing her fingers in.  There’s the shame in inadequacy, and then there’s the guilt of a mistake, a two-faced coin on any day Jen may deal with. She squeezes her eyes shut as Judy’s leg brushes against her, and tries to ignore how Judy makes this grunting noise as she shifts and stretches. 

And then, like a bullet to glass, Judy whispers, “Are you awake?” 

Jen doesn’t move or open her eyes, but she whispers, “Yeah,” back, secretly feeling relieved that  _ this _ wouldn’t extend for hours. 

Judy shifts then, making Jen open her eyes, only to see Judy sitting up and stretching, arms extending above her head, and then she’s quietly saying, “Are you cold?” as she’s reaching for the blanket. 

“Not really,” Jen mumbles. 

As Judy lies back down, she somehow angles the blanket so it’s not touching Jen at all, a sort of crumpled barrier between them, and she pulls it up and underneath her chin, as she lies on her side, propped up by pillows and facing Jen. Judy’s face is so close Jen can feel Judy’s breath on  _ her _ face. 

“Good morning,” Judy softly says, smiling. She’s so accidentally close it’s like Jen’s got a magnifying glass and is zoomed in on her chin, her lips, can even see what might be leftover drool. 

Jen gives a delayed “morning,” trying to avert her immediate thought,  _ I could keep you warm if you’re cold,  _ because how fucking juvenile is that.

“Did you sleep okay?” 

Jen considers the question. “Yeah.” She did, actually, and she hadn’t realized how fucking well she slept for being so cramped, and drunk, and twisted up with Judy. Jen does her best to nod while lying down. She has to stop herself from reaching out; she’s gotten a little chilly, of course, but isn’t about to barge her way under the covers with Judy when she  _ just _ shot down Judy’s offer. 

“Hey, no hangover,” Judy says, and Jen chuckles. 

“No hangover,” Jen confirms. 

“I really want some coffee,” Judy mumbles.

“Does sound good,” Jen mumbles back. She lifts her head slightly, only to reposition, and Judy’s looking right at her. She sinks back down, eyes cast away. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way or anything,” Judy says cautiously. And in that split second Jen has every fear cataloged, from it’s really weird you slept in my bed, to, why were you holding on to me like that, though all Judy says is, “but, you look like a baby in the morning.”

“What?” Jen says with a gruff laugh, and she begins rubbing her eyes. 

“Just,” she hears Judy say, and then the weight of the bed shifts again, and when Jen opens her eyes, Judy’s fully lying down, face to the sheet, rather than propped up, “You look...soft. I think it’s the puffy eyes.” 

Jen looks down, vision blurring into white fabric. She hears Judy’s quick, “sorry if that was weird,” and then, she’s untangling herself, asking,  “Should I go out and venture for some coffee?”

Jen pushes down any and all disappointment that the day has to begin. “You’ll be okay alone?” she says as she watches, as she eyes Judy’s bare legs. Maybe be less obvious, she advises to herself. 

“Oh, yeah,” Judy says as she stands. “I was successful yesterday, wasn't I? Unless you wanna come with me?” 

“I kinda wanna shower,” Jen says, feeling gross for going to bed fully dressed in last night's clothes. 

“Then I shall leave you be,” Judy says, almost like she’s employed a transatlantic accent for that single sentence, and then she grabs some clothes from her belongings, and Jen still stands there, awkwardly, with her hands clasped behind her back. 

The door to the bathroom closes with a silent seal and Jen takes a gulp of air before exhaling, mixing it with a sigh, and sitting down on the bed. Before Jen can fully dive into a blown-out let’s dissect exactly what was wrong with how you acted there, Judy exits the bathroom, dressed and fresh-faced. She asks Jen if she wants cream and sugar, or if she can find espresso, a latte, and after she takes Jen’s order down, she slips out the door, and then Jen’s alone. 

She immediately lies down, and she lets out a groan; flipping over and onto her stomach, she presses her face into the pillow. She hopes sharing a bed doesn’t become a nightly occurrence. It was an accident, a one-time thing; she was too tired to move into her own bed, nothing off-color, nothing of the sort. She maneuvers onto her back, and she stares at the popcorn ceiling. 

Her hips bones, she thinks, as her fingers glide across, are not protruding. She  _ can _ feel them, though not like she could feel Judy’s. 

Jen wonders about the tattoo. She pictures Judy’s tattoo, again replays how she squirmed, and had a hard time sitting still, had breathed deeply, and often tensed her body. It had done something unusual for Jen, washing her over in this sort of newfound feeling, desire if she’s ever felt it; maybe it’s because she’s alone, but the playback certainly is affecting. 

Shame runs deep. It carves its way in and only does it dissipate with enough deposition. When Jen thinks of Judy, she feels fear; the girl is a gash right through her. Judy has done something strange, and unfounded, something Jen isn’t used to wanting. Judy has, somehow, decided that Jen isn’t all that bad. Judy has seen pieces of Jen she has decided to share, hasn’t seen her bare, though has seen more of her than most, and she has decided she only wants to know more. 

She thinks of Judy and how she moves, languid and free, running in the rain. How Judy places a hand on her back and it’s the easiest guidance Jen’s known, how Judy brushes the hair out of her face, a signal of intimacy, something brewing comfort where touch never does. How Judy slides her fingers along her cheek, eyes her with those pools of honey. How Judy makes her feel like she’s on fire, how there is no other way to say it. How Jen thinks of Judy flat on her back, shirt riding up. 

She thought Judy was going to kiss her last night. She really did. For a brief, blinding moment. And she knows, without a doubt, that she would’ve let go and let it happen because, in that single second where it felt true, she had surrendered herself completely. She wishes she hadn't looked away, and she wonders. 

She’s never known herself as someone who  _ wants _ . 

She gets caught up in it, and she imagines sitting Judy down and being able to just look at her. To be able to see her without overthinking it, without her heart climbing out of her body. There’s this low, yet pulsing throb and her only thought is why has it never felt like this before? It’s never been so intense, and she’s never felt so alive and so ashamed at once. 

Her mind replays the thought, the fantasy it will only ever be: Judy, on her back. 

She imagines knowing what to do, and not being shown. She imagines that it’s okay and that it’s nothing shameful. There’s a part of her that knows caring never is, and there’s a part of her that knows caring only gets you into trouble. She’s cared for so long and about so much, and nothing good ever comes out of it. Here, she cares, and Judy doesn’t take that from her. 

There’s a sense of clarity she comes to because as she moves her hand out from under her shirt, she knows it’s immoral on enough levels to get herself off in the bed she slept next to Judy in that Jen is certain she’ll drop through the floor of this third story walk-up, straight down if she believed in that sort of thing. The ache has turned into a throb, and she thinks herself a harsh, succinct, you’re disgusting, eyes closing, and she thinks about all the times after a hookup had she gone home, crawled into bed, and gotten herself off more quickly, efficiently, expertly than any guy. Even then, though, all those times, she’d never felt like this, grounded in her body, with such a stark reminder that she’s alive. 

Again and somehow, her hand lies on her stomach, fingertips just below the waistband of her pants. She clenches her jaw, and she starts to feel nauseated by how close she is to giving in. And then, the door is being unlocked, and so Jen rips her hand away from herself, grabs the blanket, and pretends to have fallen back asleep. 

Judy says something like, “lattes secured,” into the room, and then, slightly out of breath, “oh, are you asleep?” and Jen, apparently really committing to the bit, does not reply.

“Your coffee is gonna go cold,” Judy murmurs. Jen blocks everything leading up to pretending she’s asleep out; it didn’t happen, and it wasn’t going to happen, and she’s not going to let it happen. She listens to Judy shuffle around the room and only does Jen open her eyes when it goes quiet. 

Judy is sitting in the chair by the window, legs crisscrossed with a to-go cup of coffee in her hands. The light hits her face, golden as she is, and she tips her head slightly up, like a cat basking in the sun’s warm glow. As Judy looks out the window, a small breeze sifts through, her bangs become side-swept, and there’s only so long before Judy catches her staring. 

Judy’s left Jen’s coffee on the bedside table, a muffin of some sort placed beside the cup. There’s something about this place, Jen thinks, that’s making her want to stay. To set up camp here, with Judy, and make this her new home. There’s this searing anxiety in the fact that when they leave Toronto, it won’t be to go back home. It’s the strangest feeling, the excitement there in the unknown, the unfolding days, and weeks, and months ahead, and the pure dread, the worry that wedges its way in with the thought of change. 

She thinks her mom would be proud of her, despite the crying that would have come with this decision. Then, she’s struck by the two woven facts this situation presents. Her mom would be the single most proud of her, and the loss of her mom is what’s given her the courage to do this. 

It’s just so new, being apart from all she’s known, though there is comfort in being with Judy, in navigating these new experiences, and in knowing she’s with someone who cares for her. 

Judy had said she wants to ask her things. Jen kind of can’t believe that. 

Jen had never considered herself well-liked, someone people flock to, look up to, and ache to be around. It almost socks the wind out of her. Judy likes her. Judy wants to be around her. Judy brings her coffee in the morning. Judy wants to know who she is. 

As Jen watches Judy sip her coffee, staring out the window of their in hours to be that time we were in a Toronto motel room, it dawns on her how much of her time with Judy is spent dwelling on how badly she doesn’t want the here and the now to end. She thinks, even if Judy only ever considers her a friend, it’s enough...because maybe that means she has been doing something right all along. 


End file.
